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How do you design or convert a course to a VUSM 300, Serving the Common Good, Mission Seminar?. Leanne Hedberg Carlson, Service Learning Coordinator Michael Smuksta, The Lakota of the Great Plains Val Kokott-Rebhahn, Mentoring: The Praxis of Psychology Viterbo University Outservice
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How do you design or convert a course to a VUSM 300, Serving the Common Good, Mission Seminar? Leanne Hedberg Carlson, Service Learning Coordinator Michael Smuksta, The Lakota of the Great Plains Val Kokott-Rebhahn, Mentoring: The Praxis of Psychology Viterbo University Outservice Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Designing or Converting a Course • Why Service-Learning? • What is required in a VUSM 300 course? • Will you design a new course or convert an existing course? • How will you align the Core Curriculum Outcomes with your discipline’s Ways of Thinking Outcomes (WoT) and the specific course learning outcomes? • What reading from your discipline will you include? • What assignments will you use to assess these outcomes? • Advice from the Field
Why Service-Learning? • Service-Learning is Embedded in Viterbo’s Mission and Values • Why Service-Learning in Higher Education? A Student-Focused Perspective • The Role of the Service-Learning Coordinator
Student Perspective SL Makes Students More • Tolerant • Altruistic • Culturally Aware
Student Perspective Service-Learning Students Show • Better leadership and communication skills • Higher grade point averages • Stronger critical thinking skills (Zlotkowski, Successful Service-Learning Programs [1998])
Faculty Perspective • The New American College (Boyers) • Reinvigorated teaching • American Association for Higher Education Forum for Faculty Roles and Rewards • Sense of community • Scholarships of application, integration and teaching • Publishing opportunities (Zlotkowski, Successful Service-Learning Programs (1998))
What is Service-Learning? • Volunteering: recipient benefit • Internship: skill and career development • Practicum: work-place learning • Field Study: data gathered via observation
Service-Learning • Reciprocal • Systems level inquiry • Change agents • Reflection • Linked to specific learning outcomes
Learning and Reflection (Revised from Learning Through Serving, Cress C.M, et al, 2005)
The Service-Learning Coordinator • Protects community relationships that faculty have already established • Provides resources for community sites and SL infrastructure • Promotes a shared understanding of SL • Collects and records SL data
Serving the Common Good: Student Learning Outcomes • Students will summarize evidence of change in their attitudes and actions toward taking a servant leadership role to further social justice and the common good. • Students will process an intercultural experience from multiple perspectives while demonstrating an ability to act in a respectful and supportive manner.
Common Readings of VUSM 300 • Paul Loeb, Soul of a Citizen: Living with Conviction in a Challenging Time (St. Martin’s Griffin, 2010) http://www.paulloeb.org/soul-study-questions.html • Excerpts from John Rawls’s (1971) A Theory of Justice (Harvard university Press, 1971), in Blackboard • Other articles and websites on the Common Good • “Catholic Social Teaching,” http://www.usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/what-we-believe/catholic-social-teaching/index.cfm • “Themes of Catholic Social Teaching,” http://www.usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/what-we-believe/catholic-social-teaching/themes-of-catholic-social-teaching.cfm • Martin Luther King, Jr., “The Drum Major Instinct” (excerpt) @ http://www.scribd.com/doc/71576019/Community-Conversations-for-Young-Adults-MLK-Toolkit Go to http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/documentsentry/doc_the_drum_major_instinct/ to hear the complete speech and read along as King speaks, 39 minute, 11 seconds.
Common Assignments • Blackboard Common Good site with Resources • Detailed instructions provided for • Journal Entries • Final Integrative Reflection Paper • Final Presentation
Converting a Course: History 351 (The American West) to VUSM 340 (The Lakota of the Great Plains) • Native American history as part of History 351 • Prior spring break service trips to the Cheyenne River Youth Project (CRYP) in Eagle Butte, SD • Concern: Would the students “bond” as the service trip was a required activity for the course?
Service-Learning Activity: A Spring Break Immersion Experience • CRYP • Service Work • Interaction with children and teens • Speakers • Student Placements with professionals in allied fields
Aligning Student Learning Outcomes, e.g., Intercultural Knowledge and Competence
Discipline-Specific Reading • Daniel J. Gelo, Indians of the Great Plains (Pearson Education, 2012) • Jeffrey Ostler, The Lakota and the Black Hills Penguin Books, 2010 • Colin Calloway, ed., Our Hearts Fell to the Ground: Plains Indian Views of How the West Was Lost (Bedford Books of St. Martin’s Press, 1996) • Other excerpts, articles and websites on the Plains Indians in Blackboard, e.g., • Ian Frazier, On the Rez (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2000) • Colin Calloway, “Grandfather’s Axe: Living with a Native American Past” from Reflections on American Indian history : honoring the past, building a future, edited by Albert L. Hurtado ; introduction by Wilma Mankiller (University of Oklahoma, 2005) • Sioux Nation of Indians, et. al. v. The United States. (1974)
Discipline-Specific Assignments • 2 page response paper answering this question: Based on the reading to date from Gelo, Indians of the Great Plains, chapters 4, 5, and 8 and Ostler, The Lakota and the Black Hills, chapters 1, 2, and 3, how did the Plains Indians in general and the Lakota specifically define and implement “the common good”? • 3 Primary Source Analyses • Oral Presentation of a contemporary Issue related to Plains Indians / Lakotas
Discipline Specific Assignments, cont’d • 5-page essay answering this question: • Karl Marx wrote, “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.” In what ways does Marx’s observation apply to the history of the northern Plains Indians from the period of American migration westward on the Oregon Trail in the 1830s to Wounded Knee in 1890?
Discipline Specific Assignments, cont’d • First, consider how northern Plains Indians made “their own history” as they responded to the demands and pressures imposed by the United States citizens and government in the nineteenth century, 1830-1900. Which actions of the northern Plains Indians were most effective, least effective, and why? • Second, describe the “circumstances existing already, given, and transmitted from the past” that constrained their choices? • Third, reach a conclusion that states how the lives of northern Plains Indian people changed and ways in which their lives displayed continuity and resilience?
Advice / Suggestions / Concerns/ Reflections • Distribution / weight of grades: minimum of 1/3 Common Good; 2/3 history; 40/60 split • Excellent resources on the Serving the Common Good Blackboard site • “Meshing” the readings / assignments of the Common Good and of your discipline • Number of journal entries? Three 5-page entries, two from CRYP
Some SCG Course Ideas • Meeting the Needs of Children • Discovering Self in Serving Others • Understanding Play at the Discovery Center • Natural Disaster Preparedness and Relief • Enriching Arts Through Service-Learning • Service Learning: A Sociological Experience • Confronting Poverty
SCG Course Ideas (con’t) • Citizenship, Service and Social Change • Community Psychology • Small Group Communication • Urban Gardens • Poverty, Gender and Microcredit • Youth Empowerment and Engagement • Contemporary Issues in Youth Development • Arts and Community Development
Community Partners • Boys and Girls Club • Hamilton School • RiverfrontInc. • La Crosse YMCA • Myrick-Hixon Ecopark • Mississippi Valley Conservancy • Place of Grace