Enhancing the Team Experience in Service Learning Courses

Service learning is pervasive in higher education today, with 31 percent of students at Campus Compact member schools engaging in service activities (Campus Compact, 2009) and universities’ missions and strategic planning documents increasingly aimed at developing engaged citizens. Service learning has many potential benefits for college students; among those benefits is the opportunity to develop and practice teamwork skills. The present paper describes the strategies used in a team-based service learning course to support positive team experiences for students. Service Learning and Teamwork Service learning is a part of the broader experiential education movement that has its underpinnings in the work of the philosopher John Dewey (Katula & Threnhauser, 1999). It is defined as: a credit bearing educational experience in which students participate in an organized service activity that meets identified community needs and reflect on the service activity in such a way as to gain further understanding of the course content, a broader appreciation of the discipline, and an enhanced sense of service responsibility (Bringle & Hatcher, p. 222).