CSL is about ...

What is community service learning?

Community Service Learning (CSL) is the purposeful integration of community service with academic work to enhance both service and learning.

The term "service-learning" was first used by Robert Sigmon and William Ramsey in the 1960s to describe the combination of conscious educational growth with the accomplishment of certain tasks that meet genuine human needs.  However, the integration of service with learning has been around for much longer.  See an annotated history of service learning.

Community Service Learning is about connections.  Service learning is most often linked to courses through which faculty, students and community-based organizations form partnerships.

Through service learning students connect themselves to the community in which they attend classes; they become not just consumers who frequent the local pizza shop or who clog the streets with their cars, bikes and foot traffic, but evolve into participants and contributors engaged in strengthening the community. 

Service learning connects community-based organizations to educational institutions, creating opportunities for each to employ its own knowledge and expertise to inform and support the others' work.

Community Service Learning is about effecting change.  Service learning combines service activities with learning objectives in ways intended to benefit—and even transform—both the recipient of the service and the provider of the service.  For students, this outcome is achieved by combining service tasks with structured opportunities for self-reflection and self-discovery as well as the development of civic values, skills and knowledge.  University students' service can impact the life of the one individual they tutor or mentor or it can change a community through newly created opportunities, resources or structures.

Community Service Learning is about meeting needs.  Whether through direct service or research, service learning projects are designed to address needs identified by the community itself.

Community Service Learning is about creating opportunities.  Service learning presents occasions for gathering new insights and offers challenging contexts for learning and research.

By creating a space in which students can make connections between personal, civic and academic learning experiences, service learning enables them to learn effectively.  Through service learning, students can experience how active engagement combined with reflection can help them better understand themselves, their communities and the academic content they are studying.