Service learning is one of the best ways for students to learn. Unfortunately, I don't feel that a 1301 Composition class is where that kind of learning should take place. In my view, 1301 is a basic course that students take to learn basic communication skills and techniques that are necessary for college. The three hours per week that is typical for this kind of course can barely cover the content they need. We only meet 1 1/2 hours per week. It's going to be almost impossible to overcome the lack of time available for service learning.
I've had students do many kinds of service learning projects, from making quilts for the homeless to organizing a walk-a-thon to raise money for cancer research. They were all worthy projects. The problem was that to be done well, they required huge amounts of time on the part of the student. A freshman with a full class schedule may not have the organizational and prioritizing skills to complete a successful project.
In addition, the tie-in to composition can be fairy difficult. If you want to teach students how to write an argumentative paper, it can be hard to combine that with a service project. In my experience, many students also mistake their research paper for a discription of their project. While this kind of description can be a necessary skill, it does not prepare the student to argue an issue, using support and examples from research.
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4 comments:
Vicki -
The voice of reason! Thank you for injecting your usual pragmatism into the discussion of service learning. I sometimes forget that we (the royal 'we') barely have time to cover the basics. Maybe service learning, from my perspective, would be better suited for a something like a Freshmen Experience course.
I agree with you Vicki. While I would like to be able to do everything at a teacher, it doesn't seem lke an 80 minute FYC class is the right place to do so. Students should read more and be more active in general but they're not doing either. I think students need to be hooked up to a treadmill while they read milton in a room full of loud noise. Maybe then they could see that FYC is not so bad.
*as a*
You are so right! I actually didn't know that you only meet 1 and 1/2 hours a week (thought it was a 3 hour class). It just blows my mind that the university thinks that freshmen learning how to write is important enough to require it to be taken by all freshman who don't place out, but not important enough to require it to be a course that meets 3 hours combined a week. In that setting, service learning would only be one more thing to teach in too little time. That only way I can think of to tie it in with composition class would be to make it contribute to the teaching of critical thinking.
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