Hi, I'm a graduate student who is doing research on service learning
writing & literacy projects for my dissertation. I have my upper division
students (adv. exposition) write for non-profit agencies for their course
projects. Students find local agencies and research their needs in terms of
types of publications (grants, newsletters, press releases, brochures, etc.)
and they they write a proposal indicating their project(s). Then students
write a series of projects which have some use to their non-profit. These
writing assignments give students a sense of what kind of writing gets
written outside of college. Most of the college-level research papers have
little connection with the non-academic world. What's neat about these
types of projects (which the students design) is that students see as REASON
for writing and often times their writing goes beyond the semester course
since the agency utilizes student writing.
There is a lot of teacher preporation for these courses, though. It
works best if the instructor can find agencies that need writing produced
for them rather than just sending students out to non-profits. Also, I've
found there needs to be a check/balance system so you can make sure the work
the student hands in is his/her own (a letter from the agency contact person
on letterhead generally suffices).
I'll be teaching technical writing in the Spring and I'm hoping to
have students in my sections work with the Wetlands Center, a government
agency associated with our university. They will design their own projects
with guidance from the agency and me.
These experiences give students a portfolio to take with them on the
job search or to show as a writing sample if they apply to grad school.
These projects and agency contacts can also help students get internships
and possible job connections (I have at least one success story from a
former student whose project on French Immersion landed him an impressive
job in the Louisiana tourism field--a year before graduation).
I've also done service-learning first-year composition classes where
students research papers focused on family recipes (in Louisiana, food is as
important as politics and religion). We then published a class cookbook and
raised money for the local soup kitchen by selling the cookbook. Again,
this project required a LOT of my time (especially since I was new to the
region & had NO background on editing a Cajun/Creole cookbook!), but this
project allowed me to tie in issues that we were reading about in our text
and in the local newspaper to show how students (& teachers) CAN make a
difference.
If anyone else has done similiar work, I would be interested in
hearing about it (either directly or you can contact me privately).
At 03:10 PM 11/14/97 -0600, you wrote:
>For a research project, I'm curious about the kinds of writing students do
>in service-learning courses. If you know of a course or program that you
>think makes a particularly innovative use of writing--in which students
>write interesting types of papers beyond reflective journals and
>traditional academic essays--could you tell me about it, either on or off
>list? I'm new to this list, by the way, so if this thread has come up
>before, could someone let me know that as well?
>
>Thanks in advance.
>
>David Jolliffe
>Department of English
>DePaul University
>802 West Belden Avenue
>Chicago, IL 60614
>773-325-1783
>
>
>
Risa P. Gorelick
Associate Chair, Research Network Forum
Department of English
University of Southwestern Louisiana
P.O. Box 44691
Lafayette, LA 70504-4691
Phone: (318) 482-5474
Fax: (318) 482-5071
e-mail: risa@usl.edu