Service Learning Module 1

Congratulations on your choice to count your internship hours toward an AmeriCorps Connects Minimum Time member term. This qualifies as a Service Learning opportunity.

You may want to complete this module with the assistance of your internship supervisor.

Here are some characteristics of Service Learning (taken mostly from Eyler & Giles, Where's the Learning in Service-Learning?, 1999):

* Experiences are positive, meaningful and real to the participants.

* They involve cooperative rather than competitive experiences and thus promote skills associated with teamwork, community involvement and citizenship.

* They offer opportunities to engage in problem-solving by requiring participants to gain knowledge of the specific context of their service-learning activity and community challenges, rather than only to draw upon generalized or abstract knowledge such as might come from a textbook. As a result, service-learning offers powerful opportunities to acquire the habits of critical thinking.

* As a consequence of this immediacy of experience, service-learning is more likely to be personally meaningful to participants and to generate emotional consequences, to challenge values as well as ideas, and hence to support social, emotional and cognitive learning and development.

The distinctive element of service-learning is that it enhances the community through the service provided, but it also has powerful learning consequences for the students or others participating in providing a service.

There are 4 components to Service Learning which we will be exploring through these modules:

Investigation, Planning, Action, and Reflection.

Please print a copy of this page to keep for your records before submitting.