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Creating powerful learning environments beyond the classroom

Change - May 1, 2004

Continued from page 2.

Providing students with a connected view of learning that integrates their real world experiences with classroom lectures and discussion can create a powerful learning environment. One student recently summed up the problem with other types of community service: "As a premed student, so far I've done a laundry list of extracurricular activities to 'train' me in the medical field. However, I think there has been something very important missing in my pursuits. In a way, I've forgotten why I initially wanted to become a physician: to help those in need," she said.

"With all the pressure that comes with medical school admission, I have become so preoccupied with getting the best award or best job, I have neglected to enrich myself with service learning. I have done community service, but I took it as something to add to a resume, not as something to learn from. In order to heal, compassion is a necessary precondition. Medicine for the body is little more than a placebo if the soul is unwell."

Undergraduate research opportunities, internships, and service learning all are aimed at doing what critics of higher education often insist campuses should do--give students the knowledge and the skills that will help them become effective workers and concerned, knowledgeable citizens after they graduate.

Knowing that they must perform in a highly competitive job market and wanting to get the most out of the time and money they have put into earning their college degrees, students are embracing the opportunities to meld campus and off-campus experiences into a cohesive educational whole. Faculty members continue to play an important part, but increasingly so do community leaders, social-service workers, supervisors in businesses and government agencies, lawyers, health-care workers, and a wide range of other professionals working in our increasingly diversified economy and complex world.

RESOURCES

* Bransford, J.D., and N.J. Vye, "A Perspective on Cognitive Research and Its Implications for Instruction," in L. Resnick. and L. E. Klofer (Eds.), "Toward the Thinking Curriculum: Current Cognitive Research," Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 1989.

* Brown, S.C., "Connecting to the Institutional Mission: Career Centers and the Development of Wisdom," Journal of Career Planning and Employment, 2003.

* CampusCompact, 2002, www.compact.org/newscc/stats2000/

* Campus Compact, 2002, www.compact.org/

* FMPro?-db=news_.fp3&-format=newsccdetail.html&serial==115&-Find

* Creamer, D. G. and R.B. Winston, Jr., "Foundations of the Supervised Practice Experience: Definitions, Context and Philosophy," in D.L. Cooper and S.A. Saunders, et. al., Learning Through Supervised Practice in Student Affairs, New York: Brunner-Routledge, pp. 1-34, 2002.

* Eyler, J., and D. E. Giles, Jr., Where's the Learning in Service-Learning?, San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1999.

* Furco, A., Service Learning: A Balanced Approach to Experiential Education, in B. Taylor (Ed.), Expanding Boundaries: Serving and Learning, Washington, D.C.: Corporation for National Service, 1996.

* Gordon, D., "Tracking Internship Outcomes Through Comparative Quantitative Assessment," 2002, www.naceIb.org/pubs/journwi02/gordon.htm

* Hathaway, R. S., et al., "The Relationship of Undergraduate Research Participation to Graduate and Professional Education Pursuit: An Empirical Study," Journal of College Student Development, Vol. 43, No. 5, pp. 614-631, 2002.

* Jacoby, B. and Associates, Service-Learning in Higher Education: Concepts and Practices, San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1996.

* Jonides, J., et al., "Evaluation of Minority Retention Program: The Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program at the University of Michigan," paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association (100th), Washington, D.C., Aug. 14-18, 1992.

* Jonides, J., Evaluation and Dissemination of an Undergraduate Program to Improve Retention of At-Risk Students, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1995.

* Kezar, A., "Assessing Community Service Learning: Are We Identifying the Right Outcomes?," About Campus, May-June, pp. 14-24, 2002.

* Kolb, D.A., Experience as the Source of Learning and Development, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1983.

* Kolb, D.A., Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1984.

* Komives, S. R., "Inhabit the Gap," About Campus: Enhancing the Student Learning Experience, Vol. 5, No. 5, pp. 31-32, 2000.

* Kysor, D.V., and M.A. Pierce, "Does Intern/Co-op Experience Translate into Career Progress and Satisfaction?," 2000, NACEIb Publications.http://www.naceIb.org/pubs/journal/wi00/kysor3.htm

* Landrum, R. Eric, and M.A. Nelson, "The Undergraduate Research Assistantship: An Analysis of the Benefits," Teaching of Psychology, Vol. 29, No. 1, pp. 15-19, 2002.

* Lanza, Janet, "Education: Whys and Hows of Undergraduate Research," BioScience, Vol. 38, No. 2, pp. 110-112, 1998.

* Mangan, Katherine S., "Colleges Introduce Undergraduates to Research with Eye to Building Future Pool of Professors," The Chronicle of Higher Education, Vol. 35, No. 37, pp. 29-30, 1989.

* Maryland Center for Undergraduate Research, http://www.ugresearch.umd.edu/2003

* Morton, K., "Issues Related to Integrating Service-Learning into the Curriculum," in B. Jacoby and Associates Service-Learning in Higher Education: Concepts and Practices, San Francisco. CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1996.

* Nnadozie, Emmanual, et al., "Undergraduate Research Internships and Graduate School Success," Journal of College Student Development, Vol. 42, No. 2, pp. 145-156, 2001.

* Smith, M. K., "David A. Kolb on Experiential Learning, the Encyclopedia of Informal Education," 2002, http://www.infed.org/b-explrn.htm

* Voertman, Robert F., "Undergraduate Research: Aid to Educational Relevance," Education Record, Vol. 51, No., 1, pp. 72-80, 1970.

Jeanne S. Steffes is the director of the Beyond the Classroom Living & Learning Program at the University of Maryland. She is also the president of the American College Personnel Association (ACPA). She can be reached at jsteffes@umd.edu

Since the last decades of the 20th century, the teaching and learning environment at colleges and universities has been expanding significantly beyond the standard space-bound classroom. In addition to online and distance learning opportunities, many students have taken part in structured experiential learning that has given them opportunities to test the academic foundations and knowledge they are exposed to in class settings well beyond the walls of the classroom.

The emerging education sites are often not on campus at all. Students' involvement in undergraduate research, internships, and service learning has expanded tremendously in recent years, as has been documented by many studies. Many of the groups of instructors involved are not part of any formal faculty, but they serve to complement campus-based professors and strengthen students' educational development all the same.

Non-traditional educational experiences connect students' cognitive learning inside the classroom with their affective learning in the lab, on the job, or at the service learning site. The instructors and mentors involved begin to shape or enhance young adults' sense of professionalism in their fields well before they leave the campus.

A young finance and marketing major can get experience in an accounting firm to see if that major truly matches her career goals and whether she feels comfortable in the organizational structure. A biology major interested in attending medical school can secure an internship in the emergency room of a local hospital to make sure that medicine is the best fit for his career goals and the next 10 years of his life.

Students can learn to translate knowledge into action or research into practice during such non-traditional educational activities, something that even the most intense study in the classroom cannot easily convey.

"Our systematic processes too often stop at the acquisition of knowledge. The much harder and more meaningful process is to facilitate understanding and wisdom, leading to ... informed thought and action," Susan Komives has said. "Part of our role as a teaching community is to help students inhabit the gap" between knowledge and practice, she adds. Many institutions have tried a variety of approaches to do that, including a program at my institution, the University of Maryland, called the Beyond the Classroom Living & Learning Program (BTC).

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