Effecting Change: A Redesigned FYS Call-to-Action Service Learning Project

Lydia Laucella, Assistant Director, Center for Innovative Teaching and Engaged Learning, Assistant Professor of Education and Instructional Design Center for Innovative Teaching and Engaged Learning, Walter May, Dean of Students, Reinhardt University

Abstract

During the Covid-19 pandemic, some college students have felt isolated, seeking connections with peers, with faculty, and with community partners. During this time, political and social issues in the United States have brought awareness to the need for a platform for youth to voice their opinions and to effect change. During the Fall 2020 semester, the Reinhardt University FYS administrators were tasked with revising the FYS curriculum to fit the needs of its first-year student population. To fit a new course design, a preexisting service learning project would need to be redesigned to be student-driven, site-flexible, social-change forward, compliant with Covid-19 restrictions, and aligned to the institution’s QEP assessment plan. This article outlines the creation of the 6- week long project titled, Effecting Change: A Call-to-Action Service Learning Project, which resulted in Reinhardt’s first-year students making an impact on the Reinhardt University campus and its surrounding communities.

Introduction

Service learning and community-based learning opportunities are recognized as a high-impact educational practice by the Association of American Colleges and Universities. These learning opportunities “model the idea that giving something back to the community is an important college outcome, and that working with community partners is good preparation for citizenship, work, and life” (AAC&U, 2020). Service to the institution and to the larger community is an integral part of Reinhardt University’s (RU) culture and aligns with the university’s mission, which is to educate the whole person by developing the intellectual, social, personal, vocational, spiritual, and physical dimensions of its students. It is also an integral part of Reinhardt University’s First-Year Seminar (FYS) course, a 25-person capacity course that is mandatory for all incoming, first-year students.

Problem

In the Fall 2020 semester, 310 first-year students were enrolled across 15 FYS course sections, including two Honors sections. The Covid-19 pandemic required Reinhardt’s FYS administrators-the author (current FYS Coordinator) and coauthor, Dr. Walter May (Dean of Students and former FYS Coordinator)- to replicate engaging face-to-face interactions typical of the FYS course in modified online spaces. This was particularly challenging in a course that is reliant on fostering in-person, studentto-student, and student-to-faculty interactions, especially since many of RU’s students could face difficulty engaging in on-ground classes because of work commitments, athletic travel, or quarantine mandates based on pandemic mitigation efforts.

A micro-hybrid FYS course model was piloted in Fall 2020 that was intentionally designed to accommodate the first-year students’ needs. The micro-hybrid course fused brief on-ground; in-person scheduled meetings (students were provided a synchronous meeting option) with additional weekly asynchronous learning components. All sections of FYS utilized the same course design, providing a common first-year experience.

In the process of redesigning the course, the FYS faculty encountered a hurdle, how to redesign a pre-existing service learning component that would fit the micro-hybrid course design model while accounting for Covid-19 masking and social distancing requirements. Additionally, RU’s Quality Enhancement Plan required specific assessment and reporting guidelines for service learning experiences. Therefore, the redesigned service learning project needed to be student-driven, site-flexible, and aligned to RU’s QEP assessment plan.

Designing Effecting Change

When considering how to redesign the project, not only would the outcome of the project need to be measurable for reporting HIP engagement, but what is more, the FYS faculty felt a sense of urgency to create a project that could foster meaningful connections to the campus and to the community. This sense of urgency arose because of two reasons- the impact of Covid-19 on our first-year students and the social climate in the United States during the time of the project’s redesign.

Covid-19 could negatively impact students’ college transition experiences and their development of a sense of belonging. Many college students have felt isolated because of the pandemic (Gopalan & Brady 2020). Quarantine, social distancing, and limited social interactions might have curtailed students’ interactions with faculty, students, and community partners. Yet, these interactions are vital to first-year students’ development of a sense of belonging.

The project redesign was also influenced by the political and social climate of the United States during the time of the redesign. There was a rise in youth-activism, a heightened awareness of social justice issues, and the desire for a platform in which youth can voice their opinions and effect change. Effecting Change: A Call-to-Action Service Learning Project, was created as a fusion of Delaney’s (2015) call-to-action project with a previous social-change forward project the author had created. Effecting Change was a six-week project, containing four components: a proposal, a check-in, the call-to-action, and a presentation.

The Effecting Change project was designed to be student-driven, siteflexible, and social-change forward. Students a.) picked a call-to-action subject of interest, b.) completed research on their subject of interest and developed a rationale for why they chose that subject, c.) chose their audience (requirements were at least twenty people), d.) proposed a timeline to complete their call-to-action, and e.) chose a method in which they would conduct it (e.g. petition, donation, solicitation of a behavioral change). Students chose their cause and conducted their call-to-action in any desired format as long as it adhered to the audience requirements. For instance, they could choose to create and distribute t-shirts on campus spreading awareness of youth suicide prevention, or, they could choose to elicit Red Cross donations for the 2020 wildfires in Oregon.

It aligned to RU’s QEP assessment plan; the measurable outcome of the project was the students’ creation of a Pecha Kucha- style presentation (a story-telling presentation style). The QEP standards were included in the project description; student reflections on the QEP standards were necessary to earn full credit on their presentations.

The presentation was aligned to a common rubric in Canvas that assessed for the following QEP Professional Development standards based on the service learning HIP:

1. Initiative: How did completion of this service learning project help you generate and pursue opportunities to expand your knowledge, skills, abilities, attitudes, or values?

2. Independence: How did you go about gathering more information on your subject, how did you approach information gathering differently as a result of this experience, and how did this approach inform future professional challenges?

3. Curiosity: How would you continue this project?

4. Transfer: How have you applied the knowledge you gained during your service learning experience to other areas of their life? In particular, how has this project fueled your imagination, independent thought, and lifelong learning?

5. Self-Reflection/Self-Assessment: What did you learn about your strengths and weaknesses as it relates to professional development through completion of this service learning project?

FYS instructors evaluated the products of the service learning projects based on the common outcome rubric associated with the assignment. These outcome scores were retrieved using reporting mechanisms in Reinhardt’s LMS.

Assessment of Effecting Change

After completing the project in the Fall 2020 semester, the FYS faculty learned important lessons that would influence future iterations of the project. The faculty discovered that the Office of Student Affairs was overwhelmed from fielding students’ logistical questions and were unprepared for the project’s enormity. At the time of the project, RU did not have a funding structure in place to support students’ projects; funding is now in the approval process. The FYS faculty discovered that it was vital to collaborate with RU’s Coordinator of Spiritual Life and Service to provide community outreach resources for students interested in working with community partners. Finally, students needed models to help them understand the final desired outcome of the project.

It was hypothesized that based on QEP assessment results the redesigned project would indicate deeper student reflection on their service-learning experience than the prior year (Fall 2019);however, it is important to acknowledge that the data from the Fall 2019 and Fall 2020 semesters are not comparable for numerous reasons. First, the student artifact assessed in 2019 was a service learning reflection paper, but in Fall 2020, it was a Pecha Kucha presentation. Second, the measured service learning experiences were not comparable. In Fall 2019, FYS students engaged in a service learning project in partnership with Junior Achievement of Georgia. In Fall 2020, students engaged in the Effecting Change service learning projects. Third, reporting numbers were different between the Fall 2019 and Fall 2020 semesters. In Fall 2019, there were n= 419 first-year students enrolled in FYS, n= ~250 (or ~59%) of those students were assessed via the outcome rubric. In Fall 2020, there were n=310 students enrolled in FYS, n= ~150 (or ~48%) of those students were assessed via the outcome rubric (N.M. Conklin, personal communication, March 9, 2021).

Exploratory statistical analysis revealed no statistically significant differences between Fall 2019 and Fall 2020. However, based on the mean outcome scores, the Fall 2020 assessment scores outperformed Fall 2019 on two QEP standards: Independence and Curiosity. Transfer and Self-Assessment results were similar between the Fall 2019 and Fall 2020 semesters. And, in Fall 2019, Initiative outperformed Fall 2020 (see Figure 1) (N.M. Conklin, personal communication, March 9, 2021).

Although the data is unable to indicate whether students reflected more deeply on their service learning experiences, anecdotally, the FYS faculty observed that some students used the project to socially interact. Even though the project was originally designed to be an individual project, some students collaborated within their course or with students from other FYS courses. For instance, some students collaborated to establish a RU Fall Festival that involved combining numerous student groups running donation drives or advertising their causes. Another group reinstated the campus recycling program. Throughout the duration of the project, many FYS students had to collaborate with faculty and staff on campus, and with other organizations outside of campus, in order to achieve a successful project. For example, one student collaborated with a local theatre company and raised money to support it because it had been negatively impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The FYS faculty also observed that many students enjoyed the project. In one class, the majority of students indicated in their end-of-term course evaluations that their favorite assignment was the service learning project (n=10 out of 16 respondents). In another, n=4 out of 8 respondents indicated that it was their favorite assignment. Further, one student stated in her project: “This project has absolutely invigorated me for more service in the future…I’ve realized that if you just pick something you care about and you want done, you should want to improve your community.”

Some students also demonstrated an authentic passion for their topic and dedication to the project after the end of the course. At least two groups were still actively engaged in their causes after the end of the fall 2020 semester: one of which was a group that reinstated the LGBTQ+ Alliance on campus. They are still actively running the club and presented their project at Reinhardt’s Spring 2021 Convocation of Artists and Scholars. The other, was a group of students who have continued their cause of reinvigorating the campus recycling program.

Conclusion

As a result of the redesigned service learning project, RU’s FYS students collaborated, acted, and effected change, and in some cases, longterm change. In conclusion, the Effecting Change service learning project was student-driven, site-flexible, and social-change forward. It was Covid-19 social distancing and masking compliant, and it aligned to RU’s QEP assessment plan. More importantly, the Effecting Change service learning project provided a platform in which students were given the opportunity to engage with each other, with faculty, and with community partners to effect change on the Reinhardt campus and its surrounding communities.

This article was originally published in December 2021.