This summer, I'm working on several projects that will support several service-learning courses with which I will l partner beginning fall semester. As I've said many times over, service-learning students and community partners often need local or otherwise unique data - outside of the usual "find some scholarly articles" kind of assignments. One of the projects is a libguide full of local Dayton information - statistics and such that help students understand the community in which they are working to solve problems. It's very bare-bones at the moment, but one of my colleagues and I are updating it throughout the summer. Here it is, unfinished: http://guides.libraries.wright.edu/aecontent.php?pid=336783 Another project I'm staring is a database of court cases for a service-learning class that works on "issues in public education." These students are required to find court cases as one of the sources for their analysis papers. Quarter after quarter (and now semester after semester since WSU is going through "the change" to sememsters), students choose similar topics. I got the idea to create a database with Google spreadsheets from a presentation at LOEX by Becky Canovan. Instead of searching for the same court cases over and over, they'll go in a database of our own where we can easily find them categorized by topic or issue - school uniforms, vending machines in schools, freedom of speech, etc. I always knew I had to come up with a way to wrangle all of these court cases so we could be more efficient - but I just wasn't sure what format in which to put them. Google spreadsheet it is. Thanks, Becky! By the way, these service-learning students work with at-risk students at an urban school near Dayton and they identify a problem that they witness as the school. That's how they choose their paper topics. Can I say for the THOUSANDTH time, this is why I love service-learning, as messy as it can be. I can be a transformative experience for students, community partners, communities and faculty.
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