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Community service learning guidelines

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Community Service Learning - an academic study linked to community service through structured reflection so that each reinforces the other. The community service may address a variety of community needs, community outreach and education, research or policy analysis.
http://www.deanza.edu/communityengagement

These general guidelines for all community service learning projects outline the project learning outcomes, requirements and deliverables.

  • required 12 hours of community service learning

community partner organizations (described below)


In addition to working with the community partner organization, you must complete and submit the following

  • proposal - prior to beginning your Community Service Learning project work
  • status reporting - during the project work, comment about your project status
  • summary and analysis - at the end of the project, complete and submit your Project summary and service learning analysis.


  • Review the list of partner projects. Which one do you want to work on?
  • Read the instructions for the Community Service Learning projects in the Guidelines (see below)

Contents


Project proposal

  • Prepare and submit a proposal using the outline provided. Submit to the assignment Community Service Learning project PROPOSAL.
    • At least twelve (12) hours of actual community service work are required for credit
  • Plan detailed project work. If there is a community partner overseeing the project, include the community partner in the planning process.
  • Keep a Time Log - track your hours worked with dates and times, functions performed, results, achievements. Keep a detail record of your work to include in the final project summary submission.

Complete the general information and Proposal for review BEFORE beginning your Community Service Learning project work. Submit as Community Service Learning project PROPOSAL assignment.


Think about what you are going to contribute and how this is relevant to the course. What you are going to be doing? And why this is important?

While your proposal does not need to be very long, it does need to be complete, so when it is reviewed, all the information about your project outline is in one place.

Brief outline describing your service to the organization and how it relates to the course topics

  • Organization - name, web site link
  • Volunteer information, help contact
  • Brief outline of the organization, its mission
  • How did you select this project?
  • Who benefits from the work of this organization?
  • What service will you be providing?
  • Is training or preparation necessary / available?
  • How does the organization and the community service learning experience addressing your interests or concerns for society?
  • How does this community service learning work relate to the course?


Student's responsibilities

  • Select community organization, complete and submit a proposal
  • Complete all required hours
  • Maintain a timesheet - hours with dates and times, work done, achievements, results
  • Take notes
  • Complete and submit the Summary and Analysis quiz


Status reports

Add your project status as a post to the discussion topic for the project you are working on in the Community Service Learning discussion forum (module 3).

For the status post, include total hours, a brief summary of how the project is going and any questions or suggestions to share with others working with the same community partner.


Project summary

From your experiences, we want to gather suggestions for volunteers, and suggestions for organizations and communities served. When you have performed your community service learning project work, summarize the project and answer the project analysis questions to address community needs and service learning connections with the course.


Submit as Community Service Learning Summary quiz - see course notes for due dates


Answer the project analysis questions to address community needs and service learning connections with the course.

  • Provide a brief description of the community service learning and how it related to CIS 2 topics. What specific work did you do? Were there deliverables?
    • service learning activities - your responsibilities, dates, number of hours including time for training and preparation
    • service learning connection to course topics - how does this apply to the course
  • Describe training, supervision and/or feedback your received while working on the community service learning project. Include your time log - hours worked with dates and times, functions performed, results, achievements.
  • Did your community service learning work contribute to the community? Was it worth the effort?
  • What suggestions do you have for the community organization that you were working with? How can they improve? What would help them help their community? What should an other volunteer know that would help them? How can the community / organization use students working on community service learning projects more effectively?
    • benefit of service learning to organization
    • if applicable, organization feedback - Has the volunteer supervisor reviewed this overview? Did she/he have suggestions for you or other students participating in community service learning projects?
  • Community Service Learning - an academic study linked to community service through structured reflection so that each reinforces the other. The community service may address a variety of community needs, community outreach and education, research or policy analysis.
    Did your community service learning experience fulfill these requirements?
  • What suggestions do you have for improving the Community service learning requirement within the CIS 2 course?
  • What did you learn from the Community service learning project? Will you do this kind of community service work again? What could YOU have done differently to improve this learning experience?


Community service partner projects


The California History Center

http://www.wikieducator.org/California_History_Center/

The California History Center (CHC) is an active focal point for California history studies. Emphasizing living history, the CHC provides students with a unique opportunity to "encounter the historic site, document, or experienced individual, and personally interpret and recreate a period in history."

There are several projects. You can pick one. For each, you will be researching the topic for an upcoming event or exhibition, and adding to the online resource collection. As you find articles and media on the internet, you will add a link and a description of the resource to the projects web page.

  1. Create a WikiEducator account - click on the 'create account' link at the top right of this page.
  2. Review the introduction information about editing and writing in a wiki
    http://www.wikieducator.org/Help:Editing

Pick your topic from the list. Find resources and update the appropriate CHC project's page. You will only be working on one of these topics.

  • Community Gardens - we currently have an exhibit up on an early demonstration organic garden and farm built during the 1970s in Saratoga (torn down in the 1980s). This has launched us into trying to link up with efforts on campus and off to promote gardening and sustainable agriculture.
    http://www.wikieducator.org/California_History_Center/Community_Gardens


Project Gutenberg

http://www.gutenberg.org

There are over 25,000 free books in the Project Gutenberg Online Book Catalog. The Project Gutenberg collection was produced by tens of thousands of volunteers. You can help. Distributed Proofreaders provides a web-based method to ease the conversion of Public Domain books into e-books. By dividing the workload into individual pages, many volunteers can work on a book at the same time, which significantly speeds up the creation process.

During proofreading, volunteers are presented with a scanned page image and the corresponding OCR text on a single web page. This allows the text to be easily compared to the image, proofread, and sent back to the site. A second volunteer is then presented with the first volunteer's work and the same page image, verifies and corrects the work as necessary, and submits it back to the site. The book then similarly progresses through two formatting rounds using the same web interface.

Once all the pages have completed these steps, a post-processor carefully assembles them into an e-book, optionally makes it available to interested parties for 'smooth reading', and submits it to the Project Gutenberg archive.

  • Register with the site as a volunteer.
  • Read the introductory email you receive and the Beginning Proofreader's FAQ.
  • Confirm your registration, sign in, choose a project, and try proofreading a page or two!
  • Optional - join the LiveJournal community of proofreaders - another place to ask questions and meet other "word people".


Tar Heel Reader

Books for beginning readers of all ages
http://tarheelreader.org/

The Tar Heels Reader provides a collection of free, easy-to-read, and accessible books on a wide range of topics. Each book can be speech enabled and accessed using multiple interfaces.

For this project, you will write your own books using pictures from the huge collection at Flickr or pictures you upload.

  • Read several of the books so you get the idea of how these work
  • Read the instructions to writing books. There are several different types of books - enrichment, transitional and conventional
  • Register
  • Create books about subjects of interest to you that are appropriate for college-age English Language Learners. Topics that are needed - math and science, working, studying, travel


Lingro dictionary translation

http://lingro.com/

Lingro is a project that aims to create an online environment that will allow anyone, in reading a foreign language website, a quick and easy means to translate words they don't understand. Simple in concept, yet profound in implication, Lingro uses open dictionaries and user-submitted CC BY-SA licensed, definitions to expand its ever-growing database.

For this community service learning project option, you will contribute translations to continue expanding the dictionaries. The Lingro dictionary builder helps contributors easily add translations and definitions. Once you have chosen a language pair you're fluent in, the builder shows you a list of words missing from that particular dictionary, ordered by how common they are in the language (the word "the" would be near the top, while "onomatopoeia" is further down). You can also see sentences showing the words used in context to help recall the meanings.

All the new user contributions are licensed under the CC BY-SA license and the GNU FDL to ensure that the content created on Lingro will be free forever. Anyone building on the work Lingro contributors have done will be able to freely share it with the community in the same way. This freedom is central to the creation of a commons of knowledge and allowing people to collaborate across cultures.

You must be fluent in both languages for this project.


Local Community Service project

A Local Community Service Learning Project is also an option. If you currently volunteer at an organization, you can propose a community service learning project for that organization. This is more than volunteering. Your project must related to the CIS2 course topics, and follow the guidelines for community service learning. Let's talk about it before you proceed.

  • Email your Project summary and service learning analysis (see outline) to the instructor AND to your coordinator/ supervisor at the community organization for comment
  • Have the coordinator / supervisor at the community organization add comments and forward the entire email (your original email and their comments) to the instructor.


Background information

Community Service Learning is also considered a form of experiential education in which students apply knowledge, skills, critical thinking and good judgment to address genuine community needs. This is the applied theory / lab experience. Keep notes of your experience. The summary and analysis at the end of the project requires critical thinking about your experience working in a community organization and how organizations such as the one you work with support the community.

There are many ways to fulfill the community service learning requirement by providing a value to society through the internet.

As this is a new program, we are looking for suggestions that can be used to streamline the process to accommodate many more students participating in Community Service Learning Projects.


Students said...

These are the comments of students from previous semesters who completed their Community Service Learning. I couldn't make up stuff like this. It is an honor to have made it possible for students to have these important learning experiences and make these remarkable contributions.


What did you learn from the Community service learning project? Will you do this kind of community service work again? What could YOU have done differently to improve this learning experience?


  • I learned so much from the project. When I first started the project I had no idea that people could do community service online. I really liked that project and I feel that it is a great idea. I know that a little goes a long way so helping out even a little will make me feel good. Something that I could have done differently to improve this learning experience would have been to start the project sooner. I wish I understood what to do earlier so that I would have seen how much fun this project was so that I could have started doing more community service.


  • I would definitely do this type of community service work again. The nice thing about it is that it can be performed on your schedule and the comfort of your home. I guess if I could have done anything differently it would have been to start earlier. I think I could have added more value to the organization to have started earlier, gotten feedback from the mentors, and used their comments to do a better job.


  • Well, I learned that I need to spend more of my free time contributing to community services. There's many times when I find myself surfing through channels saying "there's nothing on". Instead of wasting my time I should be helping others. I know that I will be conducting this community service again because I'm going to keep this up. After contributing some time I realized that this shouldn't just stop because my midterm is turned in. I should keep this continuing and I am going to! The only thing I could have done is given more time. I'm kicking myself in the butt now. With more time I would have been able to help out in other areas of the site, not just translating.


  • I learned that you do not actually have to go out in the community and lift things or build things to help out. You can also do online work that is just as effective. You can do little things that have a big effect on someone else and help others a lot. I think that I will definitely do this kind of community service work sometime again in the future.


Community Mobilisation

Anytime you are working in the community, you have an opportunity to be a mobiliser. You can help your community partner identify and achieve their goals, if you have learned the Community Empowerment methodology. Complete training is available online. Here is an overview of the training.


Notes

These guidelines are maintained in the WikiEducator format so they can be shared with others. As this is an evolving document, the wiki format allows for easy modification and through the history, provides a record of the changes. Comments are welcome in the associated discussion.

Retrieved from "http://www.wikieducator.org/DeAnza_College/CIS2/Community_service_learning_guidelines"
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