Final-Year Transition and Service-Learning: Working Together as a Vehicle for Student Engagement, Development, and Life Preparedness

Preparation for the demands of the 21st-century workplace is an essential priority and growing concern of both students pursuing postsecondary degrees and the faculty and administrators responsible for educating them. For institutions of higher education, demands such as graduate employability, life preparedness, and emotional stability are consistently becoming more complex to support. Research demonstrates a range of high-impact practices (HIPs) that directly influence student engagement and support student development. How can these HIPs help prepare students for post-university life? This article highlights two research projects: one that explored the post-university transition of recent graduates, and another that explored the HIP of service-learning. Using the “what, so what, now what” framework, the article presents each study and its relevant findings. Implications of those findings are then synthesized by examining the two study topics through a single lens in order to identify transferable institutional strategies for preparing graduating students using service-learning pedagogy

Facilitating Student Engagement Research: A Historical Analogy for Understanding and Applying Naturalistic Inquiry

This paper offers a historical theoretical discussion and practical perspective on the qualitative paradigm of inquiry referred to as Naturalistic Inquiry (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). Moreover, it endeavors to demonstrate the paradigm’s versatility and usefulness when attempting to illuminate phenomena that specifically occur when students experience and interact with engaging, innovative, and experientially based pedagogies (e.g., service-learning, work-integrated learning, community-based learning). This paper presents and paradigmatically supports the researchers’ worldview through a logical primacy and discussion of ontological, epistemological, axiological, and methodological perspectives (Guba & Lincoln, 2001). Following this, Naturalistic Inquiry is identified as a paradigm of inquiry that aligns with the worldview and serves as a useful paradigm for observing phenomena, collecting and analyzing data, and presenting transferable findings with regard to experiential pedagogy. This paper could serve as a citable source and theoretical underpinning advocating and calling for qualitative methodologies and research into student and community engagement

Welcome to the Volume

Welcome to the fifth volume of the International Journal of Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement (IJRSLCE), the annual, online, peer-reviewed publication of the International Association for Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement (IARSLCE), the premier network for scholars studying teaching, learning, and researching in community engagement and civic and public life. The purpose of IJRSLCE is to make available to educational practitioners, researchers, and policymakers current, high-quality research and theory on service-learning and campus-community engagement

Student Outcomes, K-20

Section Introductio

Part I. Customer Response to Different Pricing Combinations for U.S. Choice and U.S. Good T-bone Steaks Part II. The Use of an Untrained Taste Panel to Study Organolepic Differences among U.S. Choice, U.S. Good and U.S. Standard Grades of Beef

Animal Husbandr

Childhood Obesity and Slipped Capital Femoral Epiphysis

We thank Emma Morely of STEPS Charity Worldwide (www.steps-charity.org.uk), the patient charity that helped direct the research agenda and will assist in the dissemination of results. We also thank the Information Services Division (ISD) of NHS Scotland for the provision of data from ISD Scotland, particularly Andrew Duffy, the research coordinator within National Services Scotland. FUNDING: Dr Perry is funded by a UK National Institute for Health Research Clinician Scientist Award (grant NIHR/CS/2014/14/012). This article presents independent research funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). The views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NHS, the NIHR, or the Department of Health.Peer reviewedPostprin

University-Community Engagement and Public Relations Education: A Replication and Extension of Service-Learning Assessment in the Public Relations Campaigns Course

This study replicated and extended Werder and Strand’s 2011 research by framing service-learning within the larger context of a university’s overall community engagement strategy and by including alumni within the survey population.  The findings supported a general service-learning assessment instrument measuring students’ perceptions of their development of key public relations skills, along with citizenship and social responsibility mindsets, as a result of their participation in community-based projects in a public relations capstone course. While the results, overall, were consistent with Werder and Strand's study, there were notable differences. For example, this study found that there were no statistically significant difference in means— by gender, time, and client type—for most variables. However, alumni who had worked for businesses in a town designated as an official community engagement partner had higher mean scores on three items: community involvement, strategic planning skills, and ability to work with others.  The findings contribute to the collective understanding of community engagement, public relations education and practice, and the lasting impact of service-learning on students post-graduation. Whether service-learning values such as citizenship and social responsibility "stick" after graduation is a key consideration for any profession, but especially for public relations

The why not the what : critical reflection in an atypical service-learning course

Service-learning in higher education is fundamentally about facilitating connections among service, learning, teaching, and reflection to create a powerful and engaging pedagogy. Inherent in that is also connecting students, faculty, staff, and the community for mutual benefit. In 2010 and 2011, a series of earthquakes destroyed the city of Christchurch, New Zealand and a resulting example of mutually beneficial community service at the University of Canterbury (UC) emerged. Over 9,000 UC students organized themselves as the Student Volunteer Army (SVA) to provide immediate post-quake relief and this served as a catalyst for the creation of a service-learning course, CHCH101: Rebuilding Christchurch, at UC. Because this was an atypical model for a service-learning course – service that occurred prior to the course – it has Paper presented an opportunity to consider the roles of service and learning in a rather discrete way with a particular emphasis on evaluating the student outcome of critical reflection. What, then, might be an alternative model for service-learning where the service has been completed prior to the course? Further, what would the emphasis of such a course be and would the course achieve similar outcomes as the typical design, particularly with regard to critical reflection? On these questions, the literature is lacking and our case study of an atypical service-learning course, CHCH101, provides a contribution. Quantitative data for the case study was collected by administering Kember’s (2000) survey of critical reflection before and after the course. An analysis of this quantitative data strongly suggests that students’ ability to think and reflect critically improved after the course. Qualitative data for the case study was collected from students’ assignments and reflections during the course. The quantitative findings were corroborated and more thickly described by the qualitative data. This qualitative data indicates that students’ improvement in critical reflection ability occurred because of discernible and progressive shifts in their thinking about service through three distinct, and recurring, stages: 1) an initial assurance that their service efforts were inherently and unquestionably good, 2) a subsequent self-critique of that assurance, often resulting in guilt, and 3) a temporary conclusion that service is complex and nuanced

Nutrient Improvements in Chesapeake Bay: Direct Effect of Load Reductions and Implications for Coastal Management

In Chesapeake Bay in the United States, decades of management efforts have resulted in modest reductions of nutrient loads from the watershed, but the corresponding improvements in estuarine water quality have not consistently followed. Generalized additive models were used to directly link river flows and nutrient loads from the watershed to nutrient trends in the estuary on a station-by-station basis, which allowed for identification of exactly when and where responses are happening. Results show that Chesapeake Bay’s total nitrogen and total phosphorus conditions are mostly improving after accounting for variation in freshwater flow. Almost all of these improving nutrient concentrations in the estuary can be explained by reductions in watershed loads entering through 16 rivers and 145 nearby point sources, with the nearby point source reductions being slightly more effective at explaining estuarine nutrient trends. Overall, these two major types of loads from multiple locations across the watershed are together necessary and responsible for the improving estuarine nutrient conditions, a finding that is highly relevant to managing valuable estuarine resources worldwide