Combining Community-Based Learning and Project-Based Learning: A Qualitative Systemic Analysis of the Experiences and Perceptions of Students and Community Partners

This article presents findings regarding a community-based learning experience that took place from 2014 to 2017, involving 379 undergraduate students from the Federal University of Sao Paolo. The students developed 82 projects on behalf of 20 community partners (NGOs, public institutions, hospitals, libraries and individual families). The research objective is to reveal the systemic impacts of this experience. The experiment followed an action research approach. Quantitative and qualitative data was gathered by means of questionnaires, focus group notes, community partners’ project evaluations, project documents and project blogs. The data was analyzed following a convergent parallel mixed method approach. The main findings were: 1) Working in real-life projects on behalf of a network of community partners that help people in need motivates the students to do their best to accomplish the projects; however, real-life projects may also bring difficulties that could negatively impact students’ motivation; 2) The need to solve real-life problems encourages students to search for learning opportunities, which encourages self-learning, learning with peers and learning with community partners; 3) The academic projects bring many benefits (material, educational, research opportunities, motivational) to the participants, which foster the continuity of the partnership

Why Inquiry Matters: An Argument and Model for Inquiry-Based Writing Courses

This article considers the value and implications of inquiry-driven learning for secondary and postsecondary education. In response to ongoing interest in and the need to foster inquiry in English education, we share the course model of “Ethnography of the University.” This writing-intensive course asks students to become authors of their own educations; to identify problems facing the campus community; to conduct semester-long, original research projects; and to make proposals for change. Through conducting inquiry projects, students come to see themselves as writers with real audiences, to personalize an often-impersonal education, and to connect academic with everyday concerns. Two undergraduate researchers describe their projects on student life—projects that emerged from and have continued beyond the course. By describing “Ethnography of the University” and sharing undergraduate research projects, we argue that inquiry helps students see themselves as agents over their own writing and learning. When students become agents, they can more easily write their way beyond a semester, course, or educational experience—and into the stance of writers

Information technology team projects in higher education: an international viewpoint

It is common to find final or near final year undergraduate Information Technology students undertaking a substantial development project; a project where the students have the opportunity to be fully involved in the analysis, design, and development of an information technology service or product. This involvement has been catalyzed and prepared for during their previous studies where the students have been told and shown how to develop similar systems. It is the belief that only through this ‘real’ project do they get the chance to experience something similar to what is expected of them when they embark on their chosen profession; that is, as an information technology professional. The high value of ‘near real life’ educational experience is recognized by many universities across the globe. The aim of this paper is to present examples from three countries - Australia, United Kingdom and South Africa, of the delivery of these team, capstone or industrial experience projects; their curricula and management processes. Academics from institutions in each of the countries share experiences, challenges and pitfalls encountered during the delivery of these information technology projects within their institutions. An overview of each institution’s strategies is provided and highlights specific issues such as the selection of projects, allocation of teams to projects, legal requirements, assessment methods, challenges and benefits. The pedagogies presented here are not exhaustive; however, the three institutions do have in common the implementation of a combination of constructivism with a community of practice approach in delivering the project unit. The three universities recognize the need for industrial experience and learning of applied skills, and therefore make these projects a compulsory part of the curriculum. The projects tend to be real life business problems which are solved over a period of two semesters, and in the case of Cape Town it could be two consecutive years of two semesters each. These projects tend to involve practical development (for example databases and web sites). The process of project-to-team allocation is generally similar in all cases. Despite their differences, team work related problems are quite similar in all three cases presented, and seem to appear as a result of team work complexity, and the number of stakeholders involved. The intention of this paper is not to propose solutions to these problems (as these would be context dependent), but to draw the attention to the main problem categories for similar schemes, these are; • project selection, • management of students, • management of academic staff, • student team motivation, • equality and diversity, • passengers, and • assessment. Furthermore, it is not the intention of the authors to portray one approach as better than another, however, the approaches are representative of how team projects are being delivered across the globe, and in particular, in the contributing institutions. It is hoped that the assimilation and dissemination of information regarding the various approaches presented will nurture further discussion, and open communication across the globe with the view to enhancing the teaching and learning experience of such projects

One step ahead: the experience at Sabancı University in enhanching student responsibility towards society:

This paper is about a discussion on educating citizenship and social responsibilities at universities through a real life example from Turkey. The recent literature on corporate social responsibility is searching for new ways of education. This paper summarizes one of these new innovative programs, Civic Involvement Projects (CIPs) developed at Sabanci University. The paper starts with a summary of educational issues in the corporate social responsibility literature, including examples of methods and tools used at universities across the world. This overview might help us to see the uniqueness of the CIP experience. The paper concludes with suggestions to universities that are developing or planning to develop their own social responsibility programs. The main question will be to find the ways in reaching major goal of education for social responsibility to assist in understanding, values, and action skills that will help students to work with others to improve the quality and sustainability of their natural and social environments. There is more than one solution in achieving this goal; hence this paper will show just one of these potential solutions based on a real life experience. The methodology of the paper will be a literature review and a case study

PBL - making natural resource education really real

A major concern in education today is making the student learning experience relevant to facilitate workforce readiness. Problem-Based Learning (PBL) is an instructional format which actively engages students in the learning process by requiring them to solve real-life problems (Arambula-Greenfield 1996, Norman and Schmidt 1992). Often times, however, the real-life experiences used are hypothetical and, as a result, simplify the problem to the point that the realness of the problem no longer exists (Nolan and Nolan 1997). Natural resource educators can make PBL activities real by having students work with local park and natural resource agencies to solve natural resource problems. Through a cooperative agreement with Monocacy National Battlefield in Frederick, Maryland, students master general ecology course content by involvement in projects to develop a natural resources inventory and to prepare a deer environmental impact statement for the Battlefield. These activities are similar to the tasks the students will perform when employed as natural resource managers, thus making the student learning experience really real and they foster the learning of fundamental ecological concepts

Civic engagement and project learning

Published ArticleExperiential learning gives students the chance to discover the course subject and to develop their skills in the context of practical activities. This can be achieved by social learning but also within projects and planning games. In the following, we start with a focus mainly on projects in cooperation with community government, but we show that action oriented learning can take place in the wider focus of civic engagement and community projects. University and community can learn from each other. Civic projects on one side help the government to gain insight and knowledge or to directly influence the community; and on the other side these projects give students the chance to gain practical experience and social competence by means of real-life projects. Usually, community based research and social learning is restricted to students in the social sciences. We give examples that show, that also students in economics and even in engineering can participate in civic projects with a mutual benefit for community, government and universitie

A Case Study of Teaching Integrated Marketing Communication Using an Innovative Group Internship Project

In recent years, many college campuses have moved to implement experiential learning projects in many disciplines. It is generally accepted that experiential learning projects or client projects (we will be using these two terms interchangeably throughout the paper) help students to communicate effectively, perform well in teams, solve problems, and acquire functional knowledge. We describe our experience of implementing an innovative experiential learning project that required students to form a company, and plan and execute an integrated marketing communication (IMC) plan for a real-life company on a tight budget. Finally, we compare the student assessment for this group internship project with traditional client projects that typically do not involve a full-fledged execution of an IMC plan

Interdisciplinary circular economy design education through local and regional partnerships

A review of Educational Sustainable Development (ESD) strategies has found that participatory and collaborative partnerships are the most effective for engaging students with sustainability. To enable students from Higher Education to experience and understand the relevance of the Circular Economy, as opposed to the linear economy, a series of ‘real-life’ collaborative projects have been created for Design students from Product Design, Fashion Design, Commercial Interior Design and Landscape Architecture, bridging the schools of IT Computing and Business with Art and Design. These ‘real life’ projects have been created in collaboration with local and regional charities, local Government and companies. The focus of these ‘real-life’ projects is based upon facets of the Circular Economy, such as ‘Design for Longevity’, ‘Reuse’, ‘Repair’ and ‘Recycling’, with the intention of engaging staff and students with the Circular Economy within each unit of assessment. This work is evaluated using an educational framework based upon the ESD principles, which is embedded throughout the Applied Design degree programmes, with the aim of creating engaging partnerships to improve the quality and impact of the student learning experience. This paper will describe some of the ’real-life’ case studies, focusing upon first year Design degree students, the outcome of these projects will be discussed and reflections made. Fundamentally it is found these collaborative partnerships have the ability to empower students to become active partners in the Circular Economy and the Sustainability agenda

Engineering professional skills development: imagined lives and real solutions

This paper explores how providing real-life narratives can effectively internationalise a curriculum and lead to an enhanced, more engaged student experience. Many first-year Australian university students are being required to confront stories of lives beyond their immediate cultural experience. The annual Engineers without Borders (EWB) Challenge involves them in the authentic task of creating low-cost solutions to a range of actual third-world needs. The national winners then implement their projects in partnership with recipients on site: what was story, previously an exercise in imagination, becomes real. Conceptualising through story is an effective pedagogical pathway to developing student skills so that they can conceptualise real problems in needy communities and create practical solutions

Centralisation of assessment: meeting the challenges of multi-year team projects in information systems education

This paper focuses on the difficulties of assessing multi-year team projects, in which a team of students drawn from all three years of a full-time degree course works on a problem with and for a real-life organization. Although potential solutions to the problem of assessing team projects may be context-dependent, we believe that discussing these in our paper will allow readers to relate to their teaching cases and increase the general appreciation of team project related work. Findings discussed in this paper are based on the first cycle of action research in relation to an existing multi-year team project scheme. Based on the interpretivist perspective, this work draws on data from staff and student focus groups, semi structured interviews and surveys. Team project clients were also asked to comment on their experiences and the way they would like team projects to be improved in the future. Since issues affecting the success of team projects are quite closely inter-related, a systemic view is adopted rather than analysis of a single issue in isolation. Overall there is a feeling that multi-year team projects are a good idea in theory but can be challenging to implement in practice. It is argued that the main areas of concern are the assessment process, the dilemmas and tensions that it can introduce, and the related inconsistencies in stakeholder involvement, which can compromise the learning experience if not handled well. We believe that the assessment process holds the key to a successful learning experience in team project work