Managing Service Learners: Training, Supervising, and Evaluating

Perhaps one reason so much service-learning defaults to simple short-term opportunities is that, when you really think about it, serious service-learning involves enormous complexity and commitment. Service-learning extends the classroom into the community, be it local, regional, national, or international. It engages students in activities that address human and community needs, but also attempts to meet the demands of an academic curriculum, as students take scholarly knowledge into the community and bring their experiential learning back into the classroom. This integration of pedagogy with real-world experience provides a unique learning opportunity for students, which can result in positive outcomes in their academic learning and personal development. But the sticky logistics of organizing a project can cause problems for community agencies and indirectly affect student outcomes if they are not hammered out at the beginning of a service-learning partnership.

The issues identified by community organizations concerning the management of service learners include: structuring service-learning; preparing to supervise service learners; training service learners, and supervision and evaluation.