Search results

This program evaluation aimed to investigate the benefits and challenges of an international, intercultural, e-community-engagement experience involving youth and higher education students. The authors sought to understand the meaning that participants would make of an international, intercultural, e-community-engagement experience.

The program evaluation component of this project was qualitative, participatory and action-oriented. It was composed of online reflection sessions with small, international groups of higher education students from Iraq, India, Morocco, South Africa and the USA immediately following each of five interactive exchange sessions with youth from South Africa. It also included one culminating reflection session to which all of the higher education student participants were invited and a written questionnaire that was completed by the youth participants at the conclusion of the project. The reflection sessions were recorded and transcribed. Transcripts and survey data were reviewed for emergent themes.

Cultural exposure emerged as the primary theme with participants valuing the opportunity to learn about different cultures and to connect with individuals from across the globe.

This program evaluation was not designed as a generalizable study. This pilot initiative provides evidence of the potential value and importance of international, intercultural e-community-engagement experiences for youth and higher education students.

The potential value of technology to build exchange opportunities for young people is immense and largely untapped. International, intercultural e-community-engagement initiatives can be made available to students globally with relatively limited resources. A highly structured and focused plan provides clarity about expectations and requirements for students. A high level of commitment is required by all participants, including the faculty coordinators.

Although the project was brief, exposure to numerous countries and cultures allowed participants to challenge their assumptions about different peoples and places in the world. The potential benefits for greater compassion and understanding of communities and cultures in an international context are high.

This program evaluation contributes to and extends the literature on the possibilities and challenges of international e-community-engagement; it demonstrates the potential for e-community-engagement across multiple countries to broaden students' exposure to and interest in global perspectives.

The purpose of this empirical research paper is to investigate the self-perceived role of the community partner of a higher education service-learning and community engagement module.

A qualitative approach was followed by distributing a questionnaire to the community partners of a community engagement module and coding the responses using ATLAS.ti. A total of 36 responses were received from community partners who work with students enrolled in a compulsory undergraduate community-based project module at the University of Pretoria's Faculty of Engineering, Built Environment and Information Technology.

The community partners share a common interest in the students' education. They are experts in their fields and can share their knowledge with the students and the university. Through these partnerships, long-term reciprocal relationships can develop. Community partners can become co-educators and partners in education. The pragmatist representations of community partners can be challenged when they understand their own stakes in service-learning or community engagement projects. This better aids higher education institutes in the management and evaluation of service-learning and community engagement pedagogies and curricula.

Two main limitations underlie this study. Firstly, this research is based on data from one community module at a single university. Although a large number of students are registered in the module, the study would be improved by conducting it at more than one university countrywide. Secondly, the study was performed during the first coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) lockdown the country experienced. This was a completely unexpected event for which everyone was totally unprepared. Many of the community partners lacked the resources to receive or respond to an online questionnaire. The nature of the lockdown prevented the researchers from reaching these community partners for a face-to-face interview. The voice of these community partners is, therefore, silent.

The community partners reiterated their need to be seen as equal partners in the module and appreciated being part of a group of non-profit enterprises working together with a university to pursue a set of common goals. However, their status as peers depends on their willingness and ability to contribute sufficiently to the structure and demands of the service-learning module. The community partners who were able and willing to orientate each group of students to their organisation's mission and objectives, and who executed their roles according to the course requirements, experienced the greatest success in terms of project effectiveness and efficiency, and also in terms of future benefits when students returned to volunteer or provide donations. Given time, these community partners grew into an equal partner with the university's stakeholders, where both their own needs and those of the students were met during the various service-learning projects.

Since all respondents in this study are non-profit organisations, the financial assistance and free labour afforded to them by the students are of paramount importance. The community partners also understand the longer-term value implications of successful student projects, as some students return of their free will to volunteer their services when gainfully employed after graduation.

Community engagement projects are rarely investigated from the community partner's point of view. This paper elicited their responses and examined them through the lens of Fraser's theory of social justice (Fraser, 2009).

The case study in this chapter is the Joint Community-based Project (code: JCP), a compulsory macro undergraduate course that is offered by the Faculty of Engineering, Built Environment and Information Technology at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. The course was introduced to teach students the soft skills they will need as graduates and make them aware of their social responsibility. More than 1,600 students register for the course annually. Generally, students work in 450 groups each year to help more than 250 community partners. The course, which has received recognition at institutional, national and international levels, requires students to work in a community for at least 40 hours, after which they reflect on their learning experience through a report, presentation and YouTube video. The identification and selection process of community partners is based on contextual criteria, while new cohorts of students can recommend new community partners each year. Community partners’ tasks include project coordination and student assessment based on the course’s assessment criteria. This chapter discusses how community partners are identified, coordinated and sustained within a macro community service course. It also provides a conceptual framework to highlight community partners’ roles and their impact on the students’ social development based on qualitative case study research.

This chapter is a case study of the Joint Community-based Project (code: JCP) that is presented by the Faculty of Engineering, Built Environment and Information Technology at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. The JCP module is a macro compulsory undergraduate course. The need to adhere to the University’s strategic social responsiveness goal motivated the integration of community engagement into the Faculty’s undergraduate programme curriculum. The free-standing project-orientated community engagement course requires students to complete at least 40 hours of fieldwork and thereafter reflect on their experiences through various assignments. Since the advent of the module in 2011, an average of 1,700 students have registered for the course annually. Students form, on average, 500 groups and partner with more than 350 different university–community partners annually. The students are required to engage in a community service project to apply their knowledge to uplift the community. They have to address a specific need in a community to benefit that society. The exposure to authentic challenges afforded by means of their projects allows students to increase their awareness of their social responsibility and learn to work in diverse teams and multidisciplinary and multilingual environments and apply various life skills during the execution of the project. During the nationwide lockdown brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, students had to identify alternative ways to assist the communities.

The projects in which the students provided assistance included the following:

• Creating a mobile application (an app) for a project with the homeless community.

• Assisting teachers with teaching online.

• Developing various websites to assist learners with Mathematics.

• Teaching learners Mathematics via WhatsApp.

• Developing educational videos.

• Making masks for clinics and old age homes.

• Developing educational resources for disadvantaged pre-schools.

Creating a mobile application (an app) for a project with the homeless community.

Assisting teachers with teaching online.

Developing various websites to assist learners with Mathematics.

Teaching learners Mathematics via WhatsApp.

Developing educational videos.

Making masks for clinics and old age homes.

Developing educational resources for disadvantaged pre-schools.

The lecturer and the students had to adapt to the challenges of working on community projects off-site. The chapter will discuss the various students’ projects and the lessons the students and course coordinator learnt on changing the module’s format in a time of crisis.

In a highly globalized, interconnected and interdependent world, universities can no longer survive in isolation. The educational, research and social actions have an impact on the community where the university works as a change agent to promote society’s fundamental values of democratic participation and social justice. Sustainability education and awareness about social responsibility (SR) are becoming crucial mainly for students, so that they are aware of concepts such as economic prosperity, resource equity, energy sustainability and environmental health concerns (Sengupta, Blessinger, & Yamin, 2019). The SR of a university is to strengthen its ties with the community through promotion of active citizenship, volunteerism and developing a sense of civic and ethical responsibility among students and staff. Universities can have a great influence on achieving social and economic progress of a country as well as protecting the environment and addressing complex issues that plague society. The role of universities is not only restricted to exchange of knowledge but also in playing a leading role as an active member of society. Universities have come out of their isolation to accommodate and be a part of social change by actively engaging in community life and not being confined to only classroom and laboratory activities (Sengupta et al., 2019). This book provides empirical evidence on how universities have considered SRs as their prime focus and have engaged with civil society to enhance their values. Case studies from Indonesia to the United Kingdom enrich the book through their experience, interventions and narrations, which can be replicated in other parts of the world to create a better society and a more sustainable planet.

The field of service-learning (SL) remains obscure as it has been variously defined and often misunderstood by many. There is a confusion in the academic literature and in practice as to what exactly service-learning means, and this confusion has been exacerbated by the way it has been misunderstood and implemented in various institutions. The aim of this volume dedicated to international case studies on service learning is to gain deeper insight into the multifaceted nature of this subject and the perplexities associated with it. The authors of this volume have adopted a holistic approach and have captured various interventions and approaches to find out the most accurate path toward gaining a complete picture of how service-learning impacts students with its emphasis on problem-solving, experiential learning, and community engagement. The volume will shed light on how successfully service-learning has been adopted to the existing curriculum with the emergence of a new breed of students who are aligned with the needs of the community and undertakes collaborative work to solve real-world issues.