CHAPTER 1: Investigating Student Learning Within and Across Linked Service-Learning Courses

This chapter summarizes the design, preliminary results, and primary challenges of a multiyear investigation of student learning within and across a sequence of service-learning enhanced courses. The investigators are assessing written student reflection products that are guided by specific prompts designed to facilitate higher order reasoning in the context of specific learning objectives, which are shared by multiple courses in a nonprofit studies minor. The results of the research, based on independent assessment of student products and in line with the intent of the minor’s developmental design, demonstrate that student learning in later courses is more advanced in terms of Bloom’s Taxonomy than student learning in earlier courses. Although limited in scope, this study represents the first evidence we are aware of in the research literature demonstrating that instructional methods intentionally designed to build on earlier service-learning enhanced courses do lead to higher order thinking and progressively more sophisticated understanding of course material. This ongoing research project demonstrates an intentional, analytical process of curriculum design and evaluation that should lead to the sustainability of the minor. The chapter examines the challenges that underlie the limitations of the study and suggests practical implications for continued scholarship of teaching and learnings work and for the institutionalization of other interdisciplinary programs.