Presenters: Girija Nagaswami, Madeline Marcotte, Sotiria Koui
Audience: Faculty, Administrators

Location: W2-47

Learning Goals:

The participants will learn the following:

1. What is service-learning and tenets of service-learning
2. How to integrate service-learning in contextualized English classes
3. How students' engagement in service-learning can be assessed
4. How service-learning influences students' self-efficacy and persistence

Program Description:
Service-learning is a form of experiential learning where equal weight is given to both service and learning. Moreover, it offers a connection between what students learn within the confines of their classroom to deeper learning outside of the classroom. Additionally, while traditional classroom learning promotes content knowledge, service-learning not only promotes content knowledge but also socially relevant knowledge. Even though service-learning is offered to students in credit-bearing college courses, students in ESL and Developmental classes are not given an opportunity to engage in service-learning. However, research has shown that service-learning enables students to gain better self-efficacy and persistence. and students in the ESL and Developmental English classes, the most vulnerable population, would benefit immensely from a service-learning experience.

The presenters will share how they integrated service-learning in their contextualized English classes and describe students' experiences and how the service-learning experience helped in improving students' low self-efficacy and persistence. In addition, they will also share how students' service-learning experience was assessed in relation to the course learning outcomes.