When college students and organizations try to reach out to the local communities for service, several factors can limit the outreach efforts and opportunities - such as the distance between college campus and the target community, transportation needs and cost, time for transportation and/or setup, planning with the local agencies or groups, communication among volunteers as well as between student volunteers and campus facilitators. These factors may impose hindrance when it comes to institutions and service partners that are located in rural communities, thus limiting the scope and opportunity for service, engagement of diverse groups, and collaboration opportunities. Additionally, these gaps may also preclude online students from participating to organized service opportunities, due to the lack of communication capacities among the participants to plan and organize works. As for the facilitators at institutions - either that would be a full-time service learning facilitator or a faculty who leads service projects- managing the communication with the partners and with students at the local sites, effective management of the service project and volunteer workers are one of the biggest tasks they need to perform effectively. In the regards of allocation of resources, sharing campus resources (monetary budget or infrastructure) for support may take longer time for approval and justification.
The presentation will define the role of educational institutions as facilitator of "Service and Learning" (S-L) with theoretical emphasis on the dual perspective of service learning, engaged learning model and learning cycle, and active learning through social interaction. The presentation will then address the effects of enhanced communication and
(virtual) presence in the scene of service learning, and the role of technology tools, in completing the learning cycle while bringing real-life service to the partners.
The presentation will then offer best practice case reports from the institution's service learning courses and projects. The cases will be organized by typical tasks that are indicated as needed and/or requested by the community partners, and how each project has used low- or no-cost technology tools to overcome the barriers or better engage the student volunteers and community partners. Examples of technology tools such as VoIP telephony, IP video conferencing, desktop video conferencing, webinar tools, blog and micro blog, social media, and Web 2.0 based unified communication that are used in the projects will be featured and hands-on demonstration will be included.
Another important aspect of service learning is assessment of outcomes.
First, the presenters will share outcomes and reflections from the participating students and partners. The presentation will revisit the assessment cycle and examples of measurements based on student learning outcomes. Simple technology tools such as personal or class blog in the LMS was used to facilitate the exchange reflections and comments.
