{"id":17297,"date":"2015-11-02T15:32:19","date_gmt":"2015-11-02T15:32:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.valpo.edu\/cital-blog\/?p=208"},"modified":"2015-11-02T15:32:19","modified_gmt":"2015-11-02T15:32:19","slug":"community-based-learning-at-valparaiso-university-achievements-and-opportunities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/intra.valpo.edu\/cital\/community-based-learning-at-valparaiso-university-achievements-and-opportunities\/","title":{"rendered":"Community-Based Learning at Valparaiso University: Achievements and Opportunities"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/b>CITAL Guest Blogger: Elizabeth Lynn, Director of the Institute for Leadership and Service
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If you read university press releases, you may have noticed that Valparaiso University consistently earns a spot on the President\u2019s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll<\/a>. In 2013 Valpo even received distinction<\/i>, an honor conferred on only 100 institutions nationwide that year–and in 2014 we outdid ourselves yet again, achieving distinction in three honor roll categories: General Community Service, Education, and Economic Opportunity.<\/p>\n

What makes Valpo such an overachiever in the area of community service (our Lutheran identity aside)? One reason is the widespread use of community-based learning <\/b>by Valpo faculty. In 2013-2014, according to data collected by the Institute for Leadership and Service and the Office of Volunteer Programs, Valpo students did more than 260,000 hours of service and service-learning. Just over one-third (96,000) of these hours went into non-credit-bearing service activities undertaken by individual students (that sophomore who regularly treks over to Cafe Manna to serve food or to Hilltop Neighborhood House to tutor kids), or through student organizations (Biology Club\u2019s river restoration work, VU\u2019s annual Day of Caring, or Engineers Without Borders\u2019 spring break trip to Haiti). But the remaining 160,000 of those service hours went into community-based learning activities embedded in credit-bearing courses. What were some of those community-based learning activities–and why might you want to build them into your own course to deepen student learning?<\/p>\n

According to the <\/b>Glossary of Education Reform<\/b>, Community-based learning<\/b> refers to \u201ca wide variety of instructional methods and programs that educators use to connect what is being taught in schools to their surrounding communities, including local institutions, history, literature, cultural heritage, and natural environments.\u201d Defined thus, community-based learning is a much more capacious term than service-learning. Whereas service learning focuses on the experience of serving others, community-based learning emphasizes community<\/b> connections and relationships <\/b>that extend beyond service to mutual learning and exchange.<\/p>\n

At VU, a great deal of what counts as community-based learning takes place through required field work, practica, clinicals and\/or internships for majors in Business, Nursing and Health Professions, Engineering, Education, Communications and more . But, increasingly, individual faculty are also building creative community-based learning elements into their courses. To name just three examples from the past academic year:<\/p>\n