Yes. Students at any level can have substantive and rewarding community engaged learning experiences. The key is for students to be placed at organizations where they will have responsibilities appropriate to their skills levels.
Frequently Asked Questions about Community-Engaged Teaching & Learning
If you have a question that isn't addressed below, reach out to the Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning at citl@niu.edu or the Division of Outreach, Regional Engagement and Development at oerd@niu.edu.
Think of students' community work as a "lived text" for the course. Their time spent at community organizations is somewhat like required readings. When you assess students' reading assignments, you don't simply assess whether they have completed the readings — you assess what they learned from the readings, and how they can apply it. The same is true when assessing community-engaged learning.
A good community-engaged course should include opportunities for students to connect what they're learning from their community work with other course texts, lectures, and discussions. Reflection is a great tool to facilitate those connections and prompt deeper learning. See the section on Reflection on the Assessment page for more information and examples.
Most community-engaged courses do require students to complete a minimum number of hours during the semester on service or completing community-engaged work. Those hours can take place during class sessions or outside of class. There is no minimum, but the engagement or service should be a meaningful and substantial component of the course.
First, be sure community engagement isn't an "add-on" to the course. For it to be as effective as possible, it should be woven into the curriculum throughout the semester. Reflection assignments are the most effective way to integrate service-learning into your course. Reflection helps students connect their community work to the course content.
When you first teach a community-engaged course, you may encounter new challenges. Some common challenges reported by other faculty include:
- how to balance other parts of the course workload with community engagement
- how to create new assignments to facilitate students' reflections on what they learn in the community
- how to assess students' performance on those assignments
- how to build flexibility into the curriculum so students can discuss and explore unexpected experiences in the community
CITL and the Division of Outreach, Engagement and Regional Development are here to help you as you plan your community-engaged course.
Contact the Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning (CITL) to be added to the nomination list for upcoming cohorts.
Portions of this guide were developed by the Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching. They have been adapted for NIU by the Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning and are shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.