Putting Service Learning to Work in an Academic Library

I am a big fan of Service Learning. I first heard of it in library school when a classmate did a presentation on it for our LIS 639: Information Literacy Pedagogy class. At the time, I did not really understand what Service Learning would really look like because I had not taken part in anything like it in my undergraduate career. It sounded a lot like organized volunteerism, which sounded like a really great way to build connections in a community and understanding by the students. I have since served on the East Carolina Faculty Senate Service Learning Committee, which has helped me fully understand the concept. From the East Carolina website, here is a definition:

"Service-learning is a pedagogy—i.e., a way of teaching and learning—in which faculty members complement students’ in-class learning either with relevant volunteer experience at a local community-based organization or with a community-based project completed on behalf of a non-profit or community group."

Service Learning is considered to be of great importance at ECU and the university is trying to strengthen it by adding more classes with a SL component. There is a specific way for professors to apply for their courses to be designated as Service Learning courses in the ECU catalog, and I was part of this rigorous approval process. Some courses still make use of Service Learning but have not applied for the designation for various reasons. This blog post is about the ways that Joyner Library has acted as a client in courses that make use of Service Learning. A future blog post will give suggestions on how to support Service Learning courses that come over for library instruction.

Here is a diagram that can better explain how Service Learning is seated within the academy:

Diagram Courtesy of Fresno State University College of Science and Mathematics Advising

The library has served as the client for a number of Service Learning projects.* An outline of each of the projects is below, followed by some tips and tricks for working with students and faculty.

EDTC 6040: Multimedia Instructional Project Development

This online Instructional Design class had to complete a large-scale online tutorial. I worked with a team of 4 students to outline a plagiarism tutorial that I then marketed in Blackboard as "for students, by students." The result can be seen here: Plagiarism | Academic Integrity

First slide of the Plagiarism Tutorial, EDTC 6040 Project

My involvement with this one was somewhat higher than the following projects, in that I had to come up with an in-depth description of what I wanted, learning objectives, etc. and meet with the students a few times in the process. The students used Articulate Storyline to create the tutorials. We have been contacted a second time to take part in this class as clients. The Teaching Resources Center (TRC) will be acting as the client for this coming semester.

COMM 4180: Public Relations Capstone

My colleague, Tamara Rhodes, served as the client for two sections of an in-person capstone course of approximately 20 students each. The students were charged with coming up with a public relations and communications plan for Joyner's DE services. Tamara was our Online Learning Librarian and she put this collaboration together completely on her own. The students were broken up into groups and were assigned a type of DE student. The types included traditional, non-traditional, military, rural, and faculty. The students surveyed DE students and conducted a presentation. Multiple librarians attended the presentation, including myself.

EDTC 6045: Human-Computer Interface Design

This was a more recent collaboration with the same faculty member as the EDTC 6040 class, but with a different topic, web and application design. This class was also online. I provided a list of second and third tier library websites that I knew were slated for redesign to the professor. Students could pick out of a listing of websites based on their interests. The students suggested options for redesigning the websites to be more user friendly. They also had to do a small-scale user test with a few users, which fit right in with our UX efforts. Two of our webpages were selected, including the Instructional Services page and the Employment Opportunities page (as of this posting, neither have been redesigned). This project was a lot more hands-off, with students conducting all of the work and then providing us with their projects at the end of the semester.

Now, some tips for setting up a collaboration with a service learning class. 

• Look out for possible collaborations with faculty by going to new faculty orientations, reading the campus news, and actively seeking out connections.
• Contact the campus Service Learning center, if one is available to you.
• Use the course catalog to determine courses that may have a SL component that could be of benefit to the library. Keep in mind that some courses have SL assignments without a designation. If a designation is not available, find out how SL courses are coded at your institution. 

Once you are part of a SL class, here are some suggestions for success:

• Determine the level of involvement that the course will need and decide if this works with your schedule. Some of the projects were low-effort with a very good yield, yet others took some work. 
• Make yourself available to the students to talk and to meet. In the case of the COMM course, it would have been nice to meet with the students more often. For the first round of working with EDTC 6040, I know through feedback that students would have liked me to be more responsive. 
• Make sure that the communications you have with the professor or students clearly set expectations--and this goes both ways. 
• Know that you might not get a fully formed project out of the deal. In the case of the EDTC 6040 class, we got a fully finished product. In the case of EDTC 6045, we only got suggestions, but we knew that going into it. Sometimes it is good to get a report and let the librarians decide what to do with the information.

Have you worked with a Service Learning class at your institution? Did you learn anything from the process? I would love to hear from you!

*A note: As I mentioned, a number of classes incorporate Service Learning without having the designation. Most of the classes for which the library served as a client were not actually designated SL classes.