The bad news is that I had to cancel this semester's service-learning information literacy course due to low enrollment. I attribute it to a couple different factors: miscommunication with the registrar (our course wasn't titled or labeled properly as service-learning) and a very awkward time in our transition to semesters at my institution during which some students are "caught in the middle." I hope for better enrollment next spring when I teach the course again.
Days like yesterday don't happen often - but they make all the struggles of teaching worthwhile. Our students completely blew us away yesterday! A tradition of this course is that we invite our community partner staff members and the Director of the Office of Service Learning to the last day of class for a group reflection, and for the students to hand over their research portfolios to our partner.
Flexibility is extremely important in service learning partnerships. And anyone who teaches undergraduates knows that students often lack flexibility. That is one of the challenges of service-learning courses.
My journey with SL began two+ years ago when a colleague and I decided to integrate Service Learning into our credit IL course. We hoped our students could do research for a local nonprofit that needed it. Most nonprofit agencies are sorely understaffed and overworked. It seemed obvious to us that they would appreciate our students' work since it would leave them time to do other things. It also seemed obvious to us the connections between information literacy curriculum and service learning curriculum. Both aim to make students active, engaged citizens and critical thinkers. (More on