As community-campus engagement (CCE) continues to gain momentum, impact has increasingly been evaluated through qualitative measurements rooted in community-based perspectives. However, for CCE to have meaningful impact, it must challenge dominant power structures and work to create equitable relationships. This article explores efforts to better…

Holistic student learning has been a hallmark of U.S. higher education since the early 20th Century when the American Council on Education (ACE) published the "Student Personnel Point of View" (SPPV) in 1937, reaffirming time and again that learning happens both inside and outside of the classroom. To consider students' holistic…

Background: To prepare students to become productive 21st century citizens, universities have to be more engaged with society. Shifting towards community service learning (CSL) enables students to participate in, and reflect on, services that both benefit the public and also contribute to their own learning. There has been considerable research…

The capabilities students need for success during and beyond higher education extend far beyond specific discipline skills to include the development of productive mindsets, the management of life circumstances and the way they relate to others and identify with their profession. The provision of support for these capabilities at university can be…

Centers for Teaching and Learning (CTLs) are important change agents on campus with strategies that are unique and impactful--but sometimes unarticulated or misaligned. In this wide-ranging book, Mary C. Wright maps the landscape of 1,200+ CTLs in the United States through a unique approach: by conducting complex web searches to identify and…

What is one value that grounds you in your civic engagement work? How are you walking the talk of that value in your assessment work? Or, how might you? And, what both helps and gets in the way of your doing that? These questions were posed to service-learning and community engagement (SLCE) faculty and staff gathered for an assessment institute…

Assessment and evaluation practices within honors programs have attracted considerable attention within the honors academic community, e.g., the spring/summer 2006 volume of the "Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council." Calls for carefully created and constructed assessment activities within honors programs have met with mixed…

For the better part of the past 100 years, John Dewey, Ernest Boyer, and other higher education reform advocates have challenged universities to hold true to their civic roots and responsibilities by promoting teaching and scholarship in the context of the real world. In response, service-learning has evolved into a viable pedagogy to encourage…

Planning, implementing, and assessing a service-learning project can be a complex task because service-learning projects often involve multiple constituencies and aim to meet both the needs of service providers and community partners. In this article, Stufflebeam's Context, Input, Process, and Product (CIPP) evaluation model is recommended as a…

This article explores the value systems which inform assessment practices in higher education, specifically how particular forms of knowledge valued in the curriculum shape and constrain assessment practices. The data for this article is drawn from two courses which participated in a service learning research and development project at the…

Over a decade ago, Barr and Tagg (1995) declared that a shift had occurred in higher education from an instruction paradigm to a learning paradigm. A central element in this new paradigm is learner-centered assessment. While a growing body of literature suggests that this approach to assessment is a best practice in higher education pedagogy, it…

In an effort to increase the quality and quantity of service-learning assessment, this article provides a brief rationale for engaging in service-learning assessment and reviews a selection of available tools for doing so. The paper includes a matrix that lists cognitive outcomes, including critical thinking and problem solving, and the…

Service-learning projects provide students with opportunities to put theory into practice in a real-world setting. Unlike community service, service-learning projects are intentionally linked to an academic course and incorporate specific pedagogical goals. Researchers have suggested that service learning is a great teaching tool that can…

This paper examines in detail how higher education serves the larger public good, focusing on how higher education assesses and accounts for its service to society. It begins with a brief description of how the civic education of students and institutional service to society are defined for the purposes of this paper. It then discusses assessment…

Provides an overview of practical methods and tools for assessment planning and implementation for service learning and civic engagement projects conducted by colleges and universities. Offers suggestions to help readers design their own program assessment plans. (SLD)