The article discusses a year-long outreach activity, "Sparking interest in German." Five University of Utah German students engaged in the AATG/Goethe-Institut-sponsored SPARK program and taught German to local middle schoolers. At the heart of this outreach project were questions such as whether student-run outreach programs could truly…

This study investigated the impact of service learning using quantitative and qualitative methods. Forty-one First Year Experience and capstone students completed the Civic Attitudes and Skills Questionnaire (CASQ) at the term's beginning and end. Although the CASQ total and subscores did not differ, capstone students scored higher on CASQ…

Displaced learners, uprooted because of conflict, poverty, or other major traumas, are often shut out of opportunities to learn engineering. At the same time, fragile contexts demand engineers' expertise, but experts and their engineered solutions are often called in from outside the community. In this article, we examine engineering learning as a…

This investigation explores oral proficiency outcomes in short-term study abroad programs, as well as the interaction of those outcomes with the type of second language (L2) courses involved. For three years, speaking ability gains were measured in a study abroad setting among intermediate learners of Spanish under two different course conditions:…

This study examines the potential effect of service-learning training on 38 EFL teachers from the public schools of the North-Eastern Badia Directorate of Education, Mafraq, Jordan. A quasi-experimental design was used, and the participants were randomly assigned into an experimental group (n=18) and a control group (n=20). As part of the…

This dissertation explores community-based learning (CBL) in university Spanish education. Although Spanish education continues to construct Spanish as a foreign language (Leeman, 2014), recent trends such as changing demographics in the US have led to calls for Spanish education to focus more on US Latinx communities (e.g., Torres, Pascual y…

Although service-learning, as a language teaching strategy, is considered important for developing the college students' academic and soft skills, or personal attributes that people need in order to work with others, including communication skills, empathy, social skills, listening skills and attitudes, it is still a neglected area in the Libyan…

Using open educational resources (OER) in post-secondary settings has shown to reduce costs for students, advance accessibility and equity, generate motivation, boost enrollment, and improve academic outcomes. This article details innovative coursework and assessment tools for a Spanish for the Professions course designed around OER content…

English learners in EFL contexts where grammar-based instruction is still dominant often lack opportunities to use the target language both within and outside the classroom. In 2010, we initiated a club-based approach to facilitate students' learning beyond the classroom. It focused on meaningful communication, authentic tasks, student agency,…

In an attempt to better prepare future teachers to fight against social injustice, support their culturally and linguistically diverse students and wrestle with social and educational complexities around the globe, many education programs have increased the number of study abroad programs and international service learning projects. In this…

Trends toward short-term academic service-learning abroad necessitate programs designed to maximize effectiveness and measurement of outcomes. The current study sought to strategically foster and measure increases in global mindedness during an immersive community-based global learning program abroad. University students studying either Computer…

Despite its well-documented benefits for training a wide range of professionals, including teacher candidates in almost all content areas, the incorporation of service-learning into foreign language teacher education is relatively new, and most research only dealt with narrative accounts of non-work-related charitable activities. Consequently,…

While higher education internationalization efforts have traditionally been associated with the expansion of study abroad experiences, the recruitment of international students and scholars, as well as the growth of area studies and language programs, the past decade has seen an increase in a variety of multi-disciplinary approaches to…

Because of the current emphasis on accountability at the elementary, secondary, and postsecondary levels across all content areas, accreditation agencies, administrators, program designers, course developers, faculty, and students have increasingly focused on stating and measuring student learning outcomes and documenting the relationship between…

This study presents data gathered from a service-learning trip to Costa Rica designed for teacher candidates. Data include participant responses to writing prompts, field notes, and follow-up questionnaires. Results show that participants' experience with the language barrier raised their empathy toward English learners. However, participants…