Service Learning Program Identity
Why is it important to create an identity for your service learning program?
One of our criminal justice and human services assistant clubs' missions is to provide service learning opportunities for students and community-based agencies. The club affiliation provides a natural identity for service learning. Accordingly, many students join our clubs with the intent of participating in service learning. As I complete this module, I regret not keeping a log of services and hours completed by our students and faculty. Needless to say, this will now become an institutionalized practice.
The more employers or organization that are willing to work with your institution the better your student opportunities community cohesiveness and involvement is critical to the success of your institution.
Creating an identity gives students a feeling of being apart of something rather than this random thing they have to attend. When an identity is created, the opportunity for t-shirts or group photos becomes an idea, and encourages a larger attendance.
Getting envoled in the community as a student gives the student and good oppounity to get a better undersatnd of how the help and serve the public. The community will allow the college and university to help their clients in order to see if the students are valuble enought to hire.
Creating an identity for your service learning program is important if you wants students to be involved. If the program has an idenity, and a mission it can clearly give students an idea of what they are a part of.
Good point Wendy. Identity helps with referencing and will help people recall the program better.
I agree, making it easier to remember the program by having an identity and referencing back.
Like any initiative we are trying to make a lasting connection with the school, students and community. Creating an identity will help raise the visibility and provide consistency to the program.
Having an identity makes it easier for people to remember your program, and refer back to it. It can give you more exposure to the work you are doing.
We all identify with 'brands'; we have confidence in a particular product, for example because of its "branding". This concept would hold true in establishing a service learning program on any campus. That is; it needs an identity, a 'brand' that everyone involved can quickly recognize and associate with worth and quality.
Identifying the service program "Brands" or makes it unique to your institution , there are many service volunteers, when your community service is not identified it would be lost in other service volunteers.
It is important to create an identity for a service learning program because it makes the program unique and popular, which can attract publicity and more connections for the college.
It is important for schools to establish themselves as a supportive member of the community by establishing an image of service. When potential students, employers, and community partners talk about the school, it is important that those discussions include language about both education and service. This will create opportunities to partner with the community to provide great service learning offerings to our students.
Hi Carl.
An excellent point, Carl. The college and students stand to benefit greatly from a positive association with the learning community.
Trent Bartholomew
Creating an identity for a service learning program helps attract interest from other possible sites in the community, develops a positive association between the college and the program, helps people remember whom to contact if they are interested in service learning and brings pride to students by associating with this positive identity.
It allows students to be proud of the work that they do as well as helps in recruiting new students because of the branding and excitement behind it.
An identity helps solidify the participants as a team. The school's 'team' will be identifiable by the community, raising awareness of the school and it's programs (is positive advertising). Also, the students will be proud to be on this team. The identity will be an easy way for members of the school and the community to refer to the team.
1st we have to create a Meaningful service;Service-learning actively engages participants in meaningful and personally relevant service activities.
2nd shows Link to curriculum;Service-learning is intentionally used as an instructional strategy to meet learning goals and/or content standards.
3rd Reflection;Service-learning incorporates multiple challenging reflection activities that are ongoing and that prompt deep thinking and analysis about oneself and one’s relationship to society.
and finally Progress monitoring;ervice-learning engages participants in an ongoing process to assess the quality of implementation and progress toward meeting specified goals, and uses results for improvement and sustainability.
There are so many proposals in day to day. To create an identity allows people to see the role that it plays, the goals, and the expectations in advance.
