When the author first added service learning to her business communication classes, she had three key goals in mind. First of all, she wanted students to take more ownership of their work. She wanted their projects and finished products to be more about fulfilling a business need and less about fulfilling the requirements of an artificial…

"Higher Education Exchange" publishes case studies, analyses, news, and ideas about efforts within higher education to develop more democratic societies. Contributors to this issue of the "Higher Education Exchange" examine whether institutions of higher learning are doing anything to increase the capacity of citizens to shape…

Service learning projects were incorporated into the curriculum of an undergraduate course entitled "Biology of Women". The goals of the service learning projects were: 1) to provide students with the opportunity to consider issues pertaining to human biology in real-world settings; 2) to foster student engagement with the community; and…

Students from seven institutions of higher education reported their preferences for different paradigms of service at the beginning of their service-learning courses. At the end of the courses, they described the associated service activities in terms of the same paradigms and also completed scales describing their learning outcomes and attitudes…

One goal educators have is to empower students at all levels in this diverse and changing society whether they work with teacher candidates or with P-12 students. Teachers are seeing increased differences in race, ethnicity, culture, and special needs in children in their classrooms. The changing composition of early childhood classrooms…

The general focus of a course on adult literacy and community service at a large state university was to increase students' understanding of adult literacy as a societal issue and to support their involvement as tutors in local adult literacy programs. To understand what students learned from their experience in the course, the instructors began…

When community members volunteer for young people, they forge pathways of knowledge and compassion, and gain a better understanding of the mission and challenges of the schools. Youth service-learning programs that give high school and middle school students the chance to work with younger students or on community projects also leave lasting…

This proceedings of a conference on outdoor recreation and education contains conference papers and summaries of presentations and panel sessions. Following a summary of conference activities, the 14 entries are: "Working Together in Outdoor Programming: How Can It Work for You?" (W. T. Taylor, Jim Gilbert, Patsy Kott, Linda…

This report presents the findings of an evaluation of a three-year teacher enhancement project from the Social Science Education Consortium (SSEC). Under this project, middle school teachers were recruited and trained to develop and implement integrated science, social studies, and service-learning units in their classrooms. The project offered…

Higher education's concern for volunteerism and community service may be traced to the middle of the 19th century. The national organization Campus Contact, which ties institutions of higher education to a clear-cut service mission, had 305 member institutions in 1992. A survey of Campus Contact members, to which 112 members responded, established…

An intergenerational service-learning model to improve well-being of elderly nursing home residents involved 10 college students visiting 20 elderly nursing home residents and interacting with them socially. Interaction resulted in substantial improvements in the residents' psychosocial and physical conditions and in students' perceptions of…

This paper discusses the power that qualitative researchers can hold in how participants perceive, structure, and interpret experiences, particularly through interviews. Examples from a pilot study illustrate how the author influenced participants' views, interpretations, and constructions of the text of the interviews. This paper also presents a…

Teaching secondary students the basics of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) results in a variety of benefits. Conventional secondary educational programs are enhanced, and high school students are provided an opportunity to experience a rapidly expanding field as they plan for college and their professional future. For such projects, stipends…

This study reports on a pilot study of a public speaking class in which problem-based learning and service-learning were combined in a freshman engagement course. The paper describes how the two elements were combined and provides assessments that used the University of California-Berkeley Service-Learning Attitudinal Survey, narrative responses…

This study's purpose was to increase student and teacher motivation by providing students the opportunity to engage in the problem-solving process and solve student-identified campus or community problems while achieving the competencies of the Small Group Communication course at the community college. The researcher integrated two pedagogies:…