College partners sought for national service-learning study

Posted by on August 01, 2011

The University of Minnesota is seeking the involvement of 30 diverse higher education institutions to participate in a proposed national study designed to examine the practices of service-learning that contribute to factors that promote college students’ persistence and retention.

The proposed three-year investigation will study a range of practices in service-learning to determine which specific practices are mostly strongly associated with the variables that predict college student persistence and retention, including sense of belonging, strength of peer relationships, strength of student/faculty relationships, among others.

The design of the study is built on the understanding that service-learning is a pedagogy in which there is a wide variance in practice between and within courses.  The investigation takes this variance into account and seeks to examine the differential effects of different forms of service-learning offered within and across a diverse set of institutions.  These various practices and service-learning courses will be categorized, and associations between particular practices and student views pertaining to persistence and retention factors will be assessed.

The 30 institutions selected to participate in the study will each receive a small grant ($9,000 is proposed) to support their data collection and compilation efforts.

Participating institutions will need to be able to:

(1) provide a complete list of service-learning courses offered at the institution;

(2) have student enrollment data for service-learning courses and be able to contact the students who were enrolled in the courses in the previous semester to complete a questionnaire;

(3) have access to institutional demographic and other student and course data;

(4) be able to process protocols for human subjects approval; and

(5) have access to specific information and details about specific practices that occurred within a selected set of service-learning courses.

The study will involve a sample of service-learning students in completing a questionnaire about their perspectives on various factors that promote retention as well as their account of the presence of specific practices in their service-learning courses.  In addition, two professionals from each institution will participate in a set of training sessions on assessing service-learning course quality and be engaged in qualifying and categorizing different types of service-learning courses with representatives from the other participating institutions.  An official institutional letter of agreement to participate in the study must also be submitted by August 25.

If you are interested in this study and would like to learn more, we will be holding two one-hour informational conference calls at the following times:

Wednesday, August 10th
Pacific:  11:00 AM – Noon
Mountain:  Noon – 1:00 PM
Central:  1:00-2:00pm
Eastern:  2:00 – 3:00 PM

Thursday, August 11
Pacific: 9:30 – 10:30 AM
Mountain: 10:30 AM – 11:30 AM
Central: 11:30 AM – 12:30 PM
Eastern:  12:30 PM – 1:30 PM

During the conference calls, we will explain further the focus and design of the study, spell out all of the various requirements and potential benefits, and answer any questions you might have.

To participate in the call, please RSVP to Lisa Burton at least 48 hours before the call at [email protected] indicating on which call you would like to participate.   A conference call number and code will be sent to you as a confirmation. There is no limit to the number of individuals from your campus who can participate on the call.

We hope to have the opportunity to work with you on this study.