Thursday, November 16, 2006 - 8:45 AM
308-2
Higher Level Learning in Service Learning.
Students are more motivated to learn when they engage in active forms of learning, especially when they engage in teaching and writing. When students teach and write in a service learning course, there is good evidence that they actively participate, work at higher levels of learning, make knowledge their own, and remember it for the long term. In small groups, the university students conduct experiments to answer a relevant scientific problem and write several assignments designed to engage the student and promote higher level thinking. The result is a scientific poster similar to those presented at national scientific conferences. The service learning part of the course uses the same scientific experimentation and small groups of K-12 students, which includes many at-risk and second-language students. This diversity causes the college students to teach disciplinary concepts with an awareness of general writing and speaking struggles using the English language. The student diversity results in short writing assignments that also culminate in K-12 students developing scientific posters that are presented at a scientific conference at the University, along with the posters developed by the university students. The service learning project, writing assignments, student assessment, and guidelines for creating similar assignments to promote higher level learning will be discussed.
Recorded presentation