Service-Learning in Online Courses

The 2012 Survey of Online Learning conducted by the Babson Survey Research Group has been released. Key report findings include:

• Over 6.7 million students were taking at least one online course during the fall 2011 term, an increase of 570,000 students over the previous year.
• Thirty-two percent of higher education students now take at least one course online.
• Seventy-seven percent of academic leaders rate the learning outcomes in online education as the same or superior to those in face-to-face classes.
• The proportion of chief academic officers who believe their faculty accept the value and legitimacy of online education has not increased – it now stands at only 30.2 percent.
• The proportion of chief academic leaders who say online learning is critical to their long-term strategy is at a new high of 69.1 percent.

The tenth annual survey, a collaborative effort between the Babson Survey Research Group and the College Board, is the leading barometer of online learning in the United States.   Based on responses from over 2,800 academic leaders, the complete survey report, “Changing Course:  Ten Years of Tracking Online Education in the United States” is available here. An infographic of the report’s findings can be seen here.

As online teaching and learning has grown, there have not been parallel innovative developments in the field of civically engaged teaching and learning. We have some catching up to do. We need to develop innovative ways to merge these two pedagogical dynamos. Few online learners are benefiting from civic and community engagement opportunities connected to the curriculum. As online course delivery increases as a percentage of all higher education courses there will be fewer and fewer service-learners each year – unless we act now!

Before attempting to jump into a hybrid of these two pedagogies you might want to look at some current wisdom regarding the component parts. If you are a skilled and experienced online educator and want to explore service-learning, you may want to look at the wealth of information available at the National Service-Learning Clearinghouse. If you have embraced service-learning, but are a novice at teaching online you might some of the many, many, many sites out there dedicated to online course design.

Online Teaching and Learning has posted an audio interview with Rena Palloff & Keith Pratt, authors of a number of books on online education, including the forthcoming book, “The Excellent Online Instructor.”

If you have something to contribute to this site please leave a comment at the bottom of this page.

CDCE Resources

Sl online practical considerations

View more presentations from Minnesota Campus Comapct

• Useful Infographics
• January, 2011 Webinar follow-up page
• Our February 2010 Service-Learning in Online Courses Webinar

Articles (in no particular order)

• Constructing Experiential Learning for Online Courses: The Birth of E-Service by Jean Strait and Tim Sauer is an early, but insightful look at the subject.
• Making a difference online: Facilitating service-learning through distance education. by Kathy Guthrie & Holly McCracken, The Internet and Higher Education, Volume 13, Issue 3, June 2010, Pages 153-157.
• Guthrie, Kathy L. & McCracken, Holly. Teaching and Learning Social Justice through Online Service-Learning Courses. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning. October, 2010.
• Online Ed Trends at Community Colleges – Inside Higher Ed (see our blog post)
• Student Clubs, Virtually by Steve Kolowich This article from Inside Higher Ed talks about the emergence of student clubs and organizations among communities of online students. This is another potential source for identifying collaborative service opportunities for online students.
• Joshua M. Pearce, “Appropedia as a Tool for Service Learning in Sustainable Development”, Journal of Education for Sustainable Development, 3(1), pp.47-55, 2009. “The course successfully used Appropedia (1) as a forum for students who were geographically dispersed, (2) for a whole class writing collaboration, (3) to coordinate a sustainability focused outreach campaign to retrofit stop lights in communities throughout Pennsylvania and (4) to review class material with application to technologies for sustainable development.”
• Designing ee-Learning Environments: Lessons from an Online Workshop by Lindsey Godwin and Soren Kaplan
• Toward a Model of Experiential E-Learning by Rebecca Carver, Robert King, Wallace Hannum, and Brady Fowler
• Leora S. Waldner, Murray C. Widener, Sue Y. McGorry. “E-Service Learning: The Evolution of Service-Learning to Engage a Growing Online Student Population.” Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement. Volume 16(2), June 2012.
• Online Learning and Service-Learning: How They Can Work Together by Julie Phillips. Manga Publications April 6, 2012 (Article originally appeared in the newsletter Online Classroom (March 2011)
• Four Keys to Successful Service Learning in Online Courses by Christopher Hill. FacultyFocus.com. Feb. 2, 2012.
• Coordinating Service Learning Experiences for Online Students by Linda Marion and Denise Rodriguez-Strawn. Published on the New Mexico State University service-learning website.
• Extreme E-Service Learning (XE-SL): E-Service Learning in the 100% Online Course by Leora Waldner, Sue McGorry, & Murray Widener
• Integrating Service-Learning into an Online Course by Noel Wilkinson
• Integrating Service Learning in the Online Classroom by Denise Sommers (conference session description)

Other Resources

• Campus Compact’s sample online course syllabi
• Service-Learning Handbook for Distance Learning – a booklet from the Center for Academic Engagement at the University of South Dakota
• Cal State Monterey Bay maintains a site for online students to download the forms necessary to fulfill service-learning requirements. These include learning agreements, time log and evaluation documents.
• The Fusion Project is a project of Maine Campus Compact, devoted to service-learning and online learning. There isn’t much information on the site yet, but it should be informative once they begin posting results of the project.

Video

This session at a conference at Missouri State University features Jean Strait presenting “Uniting Online Education with Service-Learning.”

A video from Portland Community College

Service learning at a distance — Tom Cunningham at the 2009 Teaching with Technology Idea Exchange

Video streaming by Ustream

Books

Service-eLearning: Educating for Citizenship, Amber Dailey-Hebert, Emily Donnelli-Sallee, and Laurie N DiPadova-Stocks, Editors

Online Learning Resources

• ACER Database of Research on Distance Education and Online Learning – The Australian Council for Educational Research maintains a searchable database containing details of books, articles, conference papers and reports on various aspects of distance and online education.
• A student guide to studying online By Tony Bates
• Chronicle of Higher Education – Online Learning
• DEHub – DEHub serves as a central research institute for investigation into best practices in distance education.
• EASI has a useful 10-page document titled: Ten Tips for Online Teachers (MS Word doc)
• Educators Serving Educators is an innovative not-for-profit corporation that works with accredited institutions of higher education to develop and deliver online programs and courses.
• Learning on Demand: Online Education in the United States, 2009 – Online learning report from the Babson Survey Research Group
• National Center for Academic Transformation (NCAT) – an independent, not-for-profit organization that provides leadership in using information technology to redesign learning environments to produce better learning outcomes for students at a reduced cost to the institution. Be sure to check out their Six Models for Course Redesign.
• Profile of an Online College Student [infographic]
• Rubric for Online Instruction by California State University, Chico – What does a high quality online course look like?
• World Association for Online Education – a free membership organization and consists of individual educators concerned with e-learning

Journals

• International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning
• Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks
• Journal of Interactive Online Learning
• Journal of Educators Online
• Journal of Online Learning and Teaching

Good Articles

• Strategies for Blog-Powered Instruction – an article by Jennifer Demski at campustechnology.com
• 30 Myths About eLearning That Need To Die In 2013 by Julie DeNeen

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