Course Meeting Time
Fall 2010
Tuesday 4:00-7:00pm

Course Description
The Commonwealth College Capstone Experience is designed to provide all Commonwealth College students with the opportunity to integrate their undergraduate experiences and prepare for their careers-professional or academic-and lives as informed citizens. The CSL Capstone presents Commonwealth College students with an option for making Community Service Learning an integral component of the Capstone Experience. Students work closely with at least one community organization to complete a project that is defined as important to the organization.

Section Description: Capturing Stories for Community

Capturing Stories for Community is an interdisciplinary and collaborative course that seeks to challenge students to think about the relationships between community, history, and social change. Students will engage in a community-based oral history project with one of six different partnering community organizations for 30 hours per semester.

In this two semester 6-credit Capstone course, students will learn about theories of community development including social capital, asset-based community building, and civic engagement. Additionally, students will learn qualitative inquiry more broadly with specific emphasis on the oral history and life story methodology.  Course discussion will focus on how social capital shapes our everyday life and how social ties can lead to community involvement.

Students in this course are immersed in action, but the addition of oral histories allows them to engage directly with participants making discoveries about knowledge, rather than merely reading about the experiences of others.

The collection of oral histories provides a way for students to:

-Gain experience in qualitative data collection

-Explore a question related to the course content directly with participants

-Deepen their learning by making connections between service, the stories and existing knowledge and theory

An essential component of service learning courses is that these experiences are reciprocal in nature benefiting the service organizations, the larger community, and the student. By providing oral histories to the organizations, the students are leaving an artifact of their work which can be utilized by the organization long after the student has graduated.

 

How to Sign Up
If you are interested in this course, please contact instructor Gloria DiFulvio at gloria@honors.umass.edu.

Instructor Information
Gloria DiFulvio
Commonwealth College
gloria@honors.umass.edu