Recommended: "Give 'em some some credit"

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Here is the article Vincent Peters was referring to.

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Headline:  Give 'em some some credit
Byline:  Mark Clayton
Date: 12/19/2000
(BURLINGTON, VT.)Carey Bosak and Keith Fallon grab clipboards and 
questionnaires - tools 
for their "service learning" class in community psychology at the 
University of Vermont, and hop into a car.

Instead of going to a classroom, they'll spend this December day 
canvassing one of Burlington's less-than-cheery neighborhoods.

After numerous fruitless stops, the shivering pair is finally invited 
into the home of Luke McKenna, where Mr. Fallon takes notes as Ms. 
Bosak asks Mr. McKenna to rate things like trash and noise on a 1 to 5 
scale.

Here at UVM, where famed educator John Dewey absorbed the merits of 
learning by doing as an undergraduate, students like Bosak and Fallon 
are doing a lot in the "real world." And they're getting full academic 
credit for it.

But are they really learning? It's a serious question that many faculty 
here and elsewhere are grappling with as the effort to inculcate civic 
engagement in students gains momentum on this and other campuses 
nationwide.


knocking around: UVM students Carey Bosak and Keith Fallon interview 
Burlington, Vt., resident Gerry Baker as part of a class.




MELANIE STETSON FREEMAN - STAFF

Does volunteer work fit in a college class?

Behind the boundless enthusiasm of its proponents, there is quiet 
resistance to service learning as it expands to include new 
disciplines, from political science and economics to accounting and 
chemistry.

In discussions within departments here and on other campuses, some 
faculty question granting ever more academic credit for learning that 
departs from traditional academic study and is rooted in experience. 
There's also debate about whether, some day, to make it a graduation 
requirement.

"Some of my colleagues say this is stupid," says David Howell, chairman 
of UVM's psychology department, referring to service learning. "Some of 
that is just intellectual arrogance. But there are also some serious 
people who object because they just don't think it works."

Theory applied to experience

Bosak and Fallon will enter Mr. McKenna's views into a pool of survey 
data gathered by a dozen or so students in Professor Lynne Bond's 
psychology class. For weeks, they have analyzed, debated, and written 
about their findings - a key step of "reflection" considered vital to 
linking theory with experiences in the community. 

Both Fallon and Bosak say this class has energized them like never 
before. 

"I've really enjoyed doing these interviews," Bosak says. "It's been 
really eye-opening, a different slice of life. It's great to be out of 
the classroom, too. I've learned a lot."

Their professor agrees. "These students are learning more because 
they're doing it in the complexity of the real world," Dr. Bond says. 
"And they're reflecting on it in their class work and discussions - 
that's the key."

It is also a "win-win-win" situation, she adds, because not only do 
students learn, but the city gets a free report on residents' attitudes 
from her class. That report, a city official says, is critical to 
helping craft a new community action plan to address neighborhood 
blight. Meanwhile, the university, too, gets safer streets nearby.

Service learning is not new, of course. It has grown from a few 
campuses in the mid-1980s to hundreds of colleges and universities 
today. About two million students in the United States take 
service-learning classes.

Critics of its efficacy aren't new either - but have grown in number as 
advocates press for more service learning in disciplines as diverse as 
economics, education, and even English literature.

As associate dean of UVM's College of Arts & Sciences, Donna Kuizenga 
acknowledges service learning has potential in some disciplines, but 
not all - and only if done properly.

"I'm a great animal lover - so I could have my students volunteer at 
the humane society," she says. "But that's not going to help them in 
the 18th-century literature class I teach."

Kevork Spartalian, acting chair of the UVM physics department, concurs.

"Some disciplines are more amenable to this than others," he says. 
"Departments like psychology send students out to mix with the 
community. For us, in physics, this kind of hands-on experience is in 
our laboratory."

Skeptical faculty on many campuses want proof that service learning has 
a demonstrable impact on student academics - or is applicable to their 
disciplines.

"Acceptance from individual faculty and from campus to campus is very 
uneven," says Jeffrey Howard, editor of the Michigan Journal of 
Community Service Learning, the main scholarly journal in the field.

Overall, though, he says service learning is gaining rapidly, based on 
the growing number and quality of articles submitted to his journal.



Growing trend meets resistance

Likewise, officials at Campus Compact, the nation's leading advocacy 
organization for service learning, point to 639 member campuses, 
compared with 235 a decade ago. They say resistance among campus 
faculty is not so much about academic validity. Instead, it stems from 
several factors:

* The heavy extra work required to change a traditional course over to 
a service-learning model. Janet Eyler, a researcher at Vanderbilt 
University, says most faculty resistance centers on the complex 
management and logistics of such courses.

"These courses can be very hard to teach well," Dr. Eyler says. "It 
means transportation, extra supervision, and faculty members becoming 
engaged in the community with the student and community partners. Those 
practical challenges and the extra time involved are very burdensome, 
particularly to faculty members trying to get tenure."

The result, she and others say, is that Campus Compact, government 
agencies, and others are trying to fund new centers on several campuses 
to provide assistance and training in how to manage such classes.

* Considerable confusion over terminology. At Vanderbilt University, 
for instance, service-learning advocates are trying hard to make the 
distinction between simple "community service" or volunteering, which 
does not carry academic credit, and service learning, which does. 
Campus Compact and others now use the term "academic service learning" 
to distinguish it from pure volunteer work.

* Ambiguity over academic benefits. A Rand report last year found that 
service learning had some "civic responsibility" benefits for students. 
But it also found that "no association emerged between participation in 
course-based service learning and the development of academic or 
professional skills."

On the other hand, several studies report significant academic gains. A 
January survey of 22,000-plus students by the Higher Education Research 
Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles found 
"significant positive effects" on writing, critical thinking, and 
grades.

"John Dewey was probably more right than he possibly could have known," 
says Judith Ramaley, UVM president and the chair of Campus Compact. 
"But learning doesn't happen automatically by doing. It doesn't happen 
unless you have reflection on what it all means - unless you write 
about it, debate it, analyze it. It's not good enough just to serve 
other people soup in a soup kitchen - that doesn't teach anything."



Enhancing academics

Sitting in their regular classroom at the end of the term, Bosak, 
Fallon, and other students in Bond's community psychology course 
reflect on their new understanding of community - and the meat their 
experiences have put on textbook theory.

Bond writes terms on the chalkboard. Hands shoot up. One young woman 
talks about how the survey data showed the need for more citizen 
participation in the North End. The data, another young man says, shows 
the need to "empower" residents and all "stakeholders."

Afterward, standing in the shadow of the Dewey academic building, 
Lauren Merritt, a junior and a psychology major, ponders how this class 
is unlike any she has taken. 

"I've taken every psychology course this university offers and none 
have been as powerful or as tough as this one," she says. 

"It was extremely challenging to learn the terms and then go out in the 
community. Working in the North End, I could see how theories in our 
textbook really made sense. I think I'll remember it as one of my best 
experiences at school."


E-mail claytonm@csps.com.


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