Definitions

Service is the creation and maintenance of more just relationships.
--Nadinne Cruz, former director, Haas Center for Public Service, Stanford University

Service learning is an instructional method that combines formal coursework with thoughtfully organized community service experiences. Service learning courses address community-identified needs while helping students meet academic, social and civic learning goals.
Through service and guided self-reflection, students learn about themselves and their relationship to the community around them. Service learning allows students to engage with real-world issues and social problems, and to work with community organizations to become "part of the solution.
--California State University Monterrey Bay, Service Learning Institute Overview, (http://service.csumb.edu/overview/overview.html)

Service-learning is a form of experiential education where learning occurs through a cycle of action and reflection as students work with others through a process of applying what they are learning to community problems and, at the same time, reflecting upon their experience as they seek to achieve real objectives for the community and deeper understanding and skills for themselves . . . experience enhances understanding; understanding leads to more effective action.
--National Service-Learning Clearinghouse, "Service-Learning is…" (http://www.servicelearning.org/article/archive/35/) quoting J. Eyler & D. E. Giles, Jr. (1999). Where's the Learning in Service-Learning? San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Service-learning is the various pedagogies that link community service and academic study so that each strengthens the other. The basic theory of service-learning is Dewey's: the interaction of knowledge and skills with experience is key to learning. Students learn best not by reading the Great Books in a closed room but by opening the doors and windows of experience. Learning starts with a problem and continues with the application of increasingly complex ideas and increasingly sophisticated skills to increasingly complicated problems.
-- Thomas Ehrlich, (1996), "Foreword" (pp.xi-xii)
in Barbara Jacoby and Associates, Service-Learning in Higher Education: Concepts and Practices. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Service-learning means a method under which students learn and develop through thoughtfully organized service that: is conducted in and meets the needs of a community and is coordinated with an institution of higher education, and with the community; helps foster civic responsibility; is integrated into and enhances the academic curriculum of the students enrolled; and includes structured time for students to reflect on the service experience.
-- Service-Learning: The Home of Service-Learning on the World Wide Web, quoting the American Association for Higher Education (AAHE) Series:  Service-Learning in the Disciplines, entitled:  Writing the Community: Concepts and Models for Service-Learning in Composition (and condensed from the Corporation for National Service).

At their best, service-learning experiences are reciprocally beneficial for both the community and students. For many community organizations, students augment service delivery, meet crucial human needs, and provide a basis for future citizen support. For students, community service is an opportunity to enrich and apply classroom knowledge; explore careers or majors; develop civic and cultural literacy; improve citizenship, develop occupational skills; enhance personal growth and self-image; establish job links; and foster a concern for social problems, which leads to a sense of social responsibility and commitment to public/human service.
-- Service-Learning: The Home of Service-Learning on the World Wide Web,
 quoting Brevard Community College, The Power (July 1994).