SERVICE-LEARNING COURSE DEVELOPMENT EXERCISE
Dr. Edward Zlotkowski
COURSE REVISION PROCEDURES
In the process of converting a traditional course into its service-learning equivalent, consider the
following items. Try to address them as specifically as possible.
PART I: THE COMMUNITY-BASED PROJECT AND ITS VALUE
1. Briefly identify the current objectives of the course you want to revise. Then briefly describe a
community-based project (direct service, problem solving, resource creation, engaged research,
etc.) that could further or complement at least some of those objectives.
Current Course Objectives:
Complementary Community-Based Project:
2. Now describe specifically how you imagine the community-based project would reinforce,
deepen, broaden and/or complement your current course objectives. Note: The value the project
adds to the course may take the form of content-specific outcomes (utilization of a skill or testing
of a methodology) or more generic outcomes (such as deeper understanding of diversity or
enhanced communication skills). Or it may encompass both.
Course Enhancements Made Possible by Community-Based Project:
3. What concrete benefits would the community-based project provide for the course’s
community partner(s) and/or the community in general? (Since this question should ideally be
answered by your community partner(s), your answer will necessarily be provisional.)
PART II: COURSE DESIGN
4. What would be the best format for the course’s community-based activities? Consider the
following: (a) Should those activities be mandatory or elective? (b) Should students work
individually or in groups? (c) Should the project represent a major or a minor course component?
Explain each of your choices.
(a) Mandatory/Elective, and Rational:

If mandatory, what current assignment(s) would the community-based work
replace?

If elective, could the community-based work still be made useful to the rest of the
class? If so, how?
(b) Individual/Group, and Rationale:
(c) Major/Minor Course Component, and Rationale:
5. How can you best collaborate with your community partner once the basic design of the project
has been agreed upon? Briefly describe how, if at all, you would like your community partner to
be involved in following areas.
Preparing/Orienting Students:
Facilitating Reflection:
Providing Feedback and Assessment:
6. Identify any important adjustments you might want to make to the course’s current schedule of
readings and assignments that would make it easier to integrate the course’s community-based
work into the overall course design.
PART III: FACILITATING LEARNING
7. Identify one or more course-related topics and/or concepts that your students should be able to
relate – in class discussion and/or in writing – to their community-based work. These may be
concepts/topics that help the students better understand their community-based work or concepts/
topics that the community-based work helps the students better understand. Incorporate these
concepts/topics into specific assignment questions. For example, “How does your communitybased work help you understand the multiple implications of ‘social marginality’?”
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8. Identify at least three ways in which your students’ community-based work could help promote
personal and/or generic intellectual strengths (e.g., recognizing unexamined assumptions,
critically examining judgments, learning to deal with diversity, developing leadership skills). For
each item indicate how you might identify student progress (e.g., through the ways in which they
qualified statements made in journal entries, through the frequency with which they recognized
social perspectives different from their own).
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9. Identify specific contemporary issues or specific public questions your course’s servicelearning project will help your students better understand. Are there also “civic skills” the project
will help them develop (e.g., finding a “public voice”; providing testimony/official
recommendations; communicating with non-experts; understanding public-policy issues;
navigating political conflicts)? Identify three such issues/questions/skills.
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