scholarly journals Service-learning by PhD students to aid socially neglected people

Author(s):  
José S. Torrecilla ◽  
Santiaga Buitrón Ruiz ◽  
Manuel Sánchez ◽  
John C Cancilla ◽  
Sandra Pradana ◽  
...  

In recent years, there have been calls for change in higher education to meet the needs of today's society. A higher education that enables our students to offer solutions to struggling areas of our society. Innovative and differentiating solutions from what we have been used to until now. In view of these needs, it is necessary to unite the society, which reveals its main needs, and the university community, which offers solutions on the knowledge acquired. One of the ways to carry out this integration is based on developing a methodology called "Service-Learning" (SL). This learning method is based on a strategy of collaboration between educational centers and society itself. At present, this methodology is spreading within higher education institutions worldwide. This learning strategy emerged as a learning methodology in America, to be later extended to Europe, from the United Kingdom to the rest of the continent, and from there, reaching a global impact. Throughout this long road, this methodology has been improving, encouraging the creation of increasingly strong links between educational institutions and universities, and society, by promoting the improvement of student training as well as the development of certain areas of society. This paper presents a SL project where two apparently disparate areas are related, such as doctoral students in the area of chemical engineering and sectors of society at risk of exclusion. Specifically, the objective is for the students to present some of the technological developments they have achieved to a neglected sector of society, which should participate not only in the developments, but also learning about the technical base of such technologies.

2018 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 475-505
Author(s):  
David S. Busch

In the early 1960s, Peace Corps staff turned to American colleges and universities to prepare young Americans for volunteer service abroad. In doing so, the agency applied the university's modernist conceptions of citizenship education to volunteer training. The training staff and volunteers quickly discovered, however, that prevailing methods of education in the university were ineffective for community-development work abroad. As a result, the agency evolved its own pedagogical practices and helped shape early ideas of service learning in American higher education. The Peace Corps staff and supporters nonetheless maintained the assumptions of development and modernist citizenship, setting limits on the broader visions of education emerging out of international volunteerism in the 1960s. The history of the Peace Corps training in the 1960s and the agency's efforts to rethink training approaches offer a window onto the underlying tensions of citizenship education in the modern university.


Author(s):  
Meagan Call-Cummings ◽  
Melissa Hauber-Özer ◽  
Jennifer Rainey

Participatory action research (PAR) is a community-based form of inquiry conducted with individuals affected by an issue or problem being studied rather than about them. Rather than a method of inquiry, PAR is an epistemological stance towards knowledge and knowledge creation that is rooted in critical, emancipatory pedagogy. Because it is an orientation, rather than a discrete method, PAR is difficult to teach. Here the authors explore the experiences of both undergraduate pre-service teachers and doctoral students as they seek to reconcile PAR principles and practice with their personal and professional backgrounds. The purpose is not to present the best approach for teaching PAR in the university classroom; rather, it is a reflective exploration of the experiences of the authors' participants, which reveals rich insights into what it feels like to become researchers within the ‘culture' of formal higher education in the United States.


2019 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jana V. Müller ◽  
Lieketseng Ned ◽  
Hananja Boshoff

Background: The call for institutions of higher education to foster interaction with communities and ensure training is responsive to the needs of communities is well documented. In 2011, Stellenbosch University collaborated with the Worcester community to identify the needs of people with disabilities within the community. How the university was engaging with these identified needs through student training still needed to be determined.Objectives: This study describes the engagement process of reciprocity and responsivity in aligning needs identified by persons with disability to four undergraduate allied health student training programmes in Worcester, Western Cape.Method: A single case study using the participatory action research appraisal methods explored how undergraduate student service learning was responding to 21 needs previously identified in 2011 alongside persons with disability allowing for comprehensive feedback and a collaborative and coordinated response.Results: Students’ service learning activities addressed 14 of the 21 needs. Further collaborative dialogue resulted in re-grouping the needs into six themes accompanied by a planned collaborative response by both community and student learning to address all 21 needs previously identified.Conclusion: Undergraduate students’ service learning in communities has the potential to meet community identified needs especially when participatory action research strategies are implemented. Reciprocity exists when university and community co-engage to construct, reflect and adjust responsive service learning. This has the potential to create a collaborative environment and process in which trust, accountability, inclusion and communication is possible between the university and the community.


2010 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 12-17
Author(s):  
Sue Breakell

The University of Brighton Design Archives, strongly embedded in the research context of the university’s design practice and history activities, has participated in a number of collaborative higher education initiatives to digitise groups of material for cross-collection searching or in learning packages. Such project-based activities, common to many archives, may not reflect the catalogue hierarchies of the collections from which they are drawn, and consequently the full evidential value of their context. But does this matter when we consider the myriad ways in which an ever-wider range of audiences may now engage with the material, thanks to recent technological developments both inside and outside the archival community?


2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 55
Author(s):  
Susan Ashworth

The University of Glasgow Library is continuously developing space and services to meet the need of students and researchers in an evolving higher education landscape. We are an evidence-based organisation and have used tools such as ethnography, surveys and focus groups to understand how users interact with the physical and virtual library. We have also introduced new roles and created new partnerships across the University, particularly in the context of the United Kingdom Government’s policy on open access and funder requirements for the management of research data. This paper will focus on how the University of Glasgow Library is adapting to both the dynamic scholarly communications environment and the demands of our national research exercise and evidence from users and changing student needs. Every six years in the UK, there is a national research assessment exercise called the Research Excellence Framework (REF) and measurement of the performance of research outputs is a key part of that exercise. From 1st April 2016, in order to be eligible for the next REF, the accepted final version of journal articles and conference proceedings must have been deposited into an institutional repository within three months of the date of acceptance and made open access. Many research funders, such as the Wellcome Trust, also have policies on open access. The Library, in close partnership with the University’s Research Office, has taken the lead in publicising these policies to ensure that researchers are aware of their responsibilities. It has also developed new functionality in Enlighten, our institutional repository service to support compliance. In 2015, the Library commissioned an in-depth ethnographic study to help us more readily understand the changing needs of students and how they use library space. An overview of the results of this work and our next steps will demonstrate how we are “enabling progress”.


This anniversary volume of the Association for the Teaching of Spanish in Higher Education in the United Kingdom is a compilation of contributions made by members and delegates at the 2019 ELEUK annual conference held at the University of Edinburgh. Throughout the book, authors share their teaching, assessment, and research practice in the area of Spanish Language Teaching (SLT). From strategies to enhance student engagement and foster student agency to reflections on language teaching practice from diverse angles, these nine short papers contribute to current debates around foreign language pedagogy, with a focus on teaching Spanish in the higher education context.


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-135
Author(s):  
Tom Lowe ◽  
Cassie Shaw

The construction of what students constitute to be “good” feedback often plagues the minds of academics, who seem to continuously search for the holy grail of what it is exactly students want from their feedback in Higher Education. This aspect of the student experience in assessment and feedback continues to elude institutions by the nationally lower average scores in the United Kingdom annual National Student Survey questions on timely/prompt feedback (NSS, 2017, Gartland et al 2016) which makes this a topical area for exploration and discussion. To investigate student perceptions of feedback in an alternative method, this article examines the qualitative data from three years of Student-Led Teaching Awards (STLA) nominations for the category “Best Lecturer for Constructive and Efficient Feedback” at the University of Winchester. From this study, new revelations in regards to the student perception of the ‘best’ lecturer(s) feedback practice have come to light including terminology, language and emphasis on email turnaround, rather than the actual format of the feedback itself (handwritten, e-submission etc.). In order to tease out the repetitive emerging themes for what students are perceiving to be “good” feedback, this paper will outline the findings of this study, including the methodology and nomination process of the SLTAs at Winchester. 


Author(s):  
Heiden C Anorico

Service-learning in the educational sector has shown increased impact on student lifelong learning and institutional commitment to the community over the past decade. Universities in the Philippines provide various service-learning programs for their partner communities, to address students’ understanding of real-life community needs. However, there has been little study on students’ service-learning in geriatric institutions. This article first discusses higher education in the Philippines, noting the impact of the National Service Training Program on institutions’ programs. It then describes how one university, the University of Santo Tomas, has responded to this policy framework with the development of community programs that also meet its goals for social transformation. One particular program is examined – a service-learning program involving college students and a geriatric institution in Manila. Early qualitative feedback provides an understanding of college students’ perceptions of the elderly and the service-learning implemented by the university. It also offers a strong foundation for continuing to improve the current service-learning program. From this study an 8-loop model has been developed for future evaluations of the service-learning program in this geriatric institution. Keywordsservice-learning, elderly, geriatric institution, Philippines higher education


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