Argues teachers must learn how to conceptualize the connections between the academy and society in ways that student, administrators, and teachers find convincing. Provides practical as well as theoretical justification for teaching public-discourse writing in a first-year composition course. Discusses several service learning projects produced by…

Discusses how a writing/design (service learning) assignment in a technical writing class offered an opportunity to investigate differences and similarities in evaluation criteria between the classroom (instructors) and the workplace (clients outside academe). Finds considerable overlap between what instructors and clients emphasized, and large…

States that service learning educates students to volunteer their expertise for the benefit of society. Suggests that teachers of business and technical writing can apply this pedagogy by assigning students to write for nonprofits. Describes service learning's origins; proposes a rationale for it; explains sequential projects and teaching methods…

A composition instructor developed a course that has moral traction, a course intended to serve as a blueprint for students, a heuristic for enlarging social consciousness and effecting social change. On the first day of class, the instructor introduces the "fundamental theme" of poverty and a schedule of assignments/activities that…

Describes a "distant service learning" unit in a first-year composition course in which students wrote for a nonprofit organization in the classroom. Discusses program activities in relation to the first-year composition curriculum, program activities and the nonprofit organization, classroom implementation and assessment (including scoring guide…

It is difficult for a student to understand small group communication and the role communication plays in making an experience a positive or negative one until he or she is actually involved in small group experience. Such goes the argument for experiential learning in the classroom. By incorporating a service-learning component into the…