The Impacts of Service Learning on First Year Students:

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The Impacts of Service Learning on First Year
Students
Educating the Heart and Mind

• Nathan K. Mitchell, McNair Scholar
• Environmental Policy and Planning, Virginia Tech
• Gerry Kowalski, Faculty Mentor
• Gail Kirby, Faculty Mentor
• Department of Residence Education

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Who is Generation Y?

• Low sense of self efficacy
• Confident in their future, but not in future of
  the world
• Bored with class
• Some experience with diversity
• Find it hard to form strong relationships with
  anyone
• Had unstable childhood
• Low confidence
• (CIRP, 2001, YFCY, 2002)

• Higher empathy in women, lower in male students
• Technologically advanced.
• High alcohol use
• Some community service
• Middle conservative
• Highly competitive
• Affluent
• Career oriented

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The Wing

• 200students residing in Slusher Wing
• All first year VT students
• A true learning community
• First Year Seminar

(Pictures Courtesy of RDP)
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The First Year Seminar

• Study Skills
• Group work
• Transition issues
• VT Basics
• Writing intensive
• Cultural history
• Healthy choices

• Critical Reading
• Technology skills
• Research Skills
• Peer education
• Support group
• Advising/Academic issues
• Referral Service

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What is lacking in first year education?

• Training in appreciating those that are
  different.
• Civic engagement/responsibility
• Appreciation for community
• Self Advocacy and Help Seeking Behavior
• Interpersonal skills

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What is Service Learning(SL)?

• Community service attached to a class
• An educational tool
• Involves intense reflection
• Intentionally used to enhance curriculum
• Field Experience in a community

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As a pedagogy/philosophy, SL

• Aides students in making real world
  connections.
• Helps students develop better interpersonal,
  oral, and written communalization skills.
• Helps students develop increased leadership
  skills.
• Aides students in developing a knowledge of
  community and efficacy.
• Aides students in developing greater self
  knowledge.
• Helps students form stronger relationships with
  faculty and peers.
• Helps students in developing an appreciation for
  those that are different than they are.

(Eyler and Giles 1999)
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Experiential Learning Cycle
Concrete Experience
Reflector
Activist
Active Experimentation
Reflective Observation
Theorist
Pragmatist
Abstract Conceptualization
Adapted from Eyler and Giles 1996
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What did we do?

• Adding a community service option to the first
  year seminar
• Refining assignments to connect to service
• Guiding reflection
• Training our students to mentor
• Giving our students greater access
• Integrated text that combines social awareness
  and mentoring help.

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Course Highlights
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The Subjects
Our Students
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Our Site
(From Montgomery County Public Schools)

• Our students mentored a 7th grade student in
  Blacksburg Middle School.
• They attended sessions two times a week for 20
  hours a semester.

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A Typical Mentoring Session
Have goals for everything
Respect Confidentiality
Be truthful and honest
Listening
Ask for help if you need it.
Be open
Minor Tutoring
Remember that you know more than they do.
Caring
Having fun
Reward good work with encouragement or paper
football
Come prepared, sometimes they wont
Motivation!!!
Remember, they have stress too.
Be strong
2002 FYS Seminar Class
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Methods

• Longitudinal study from the beginning of the fall
  semester to the end.
• Pre college and post first semester
  questionnaire.
• Midterm 11 interview/reflection session.
• Comparison with a group inside the WING and a
  group outside the WING.

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Variables

• Self reported range of experiences
• Activities Social, Academic, Athletic,
  Artistic, Religious, cultural, or any
  co- curricular activity
• Continued service
• Attending cultural events
• Self reported behaviors
• Challenging prejudicial behaviors
• Utilizing university services
• Academic behavior and grades after Fall
  semester.

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Variables Cont

• Reporting positive interactions with those that
  are different
• Self reported attitudes
• Feelings of comfort at Virginia Tech
• Reporting a social network
• Close peers
• Teachers that seem to care

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Eight Different Outcomes

• Students self reported to have learned these
  skills from their experience
• Mentoring provides a chance for me to directly
  change the worldHe helps me to realize that I am
  making a difference in the world and that I
  shouldn't give up. ever.
• I have learned how to look for different ways to
  motivate a younger person.
• I have learned to be more patient, and to
  express myself in more than one way.

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Eight Different Outcomes

• I think that through this experience I have
  learned to be more patient, to be a better
  leader, and better communications skills. For all
  of our lives up to now, we have been in the
  reverse position, and I think this experience
  helps us all learn how to be a better person by
  learning how to help others. It also allows us to
  gain a feeling of self-importance that many of us
  have never had before.
• I like it when i can see that i am helping
  someone with a particular thing. This kind of
  reinforces one idea that i had about trying to
  earn a teaching certificate while in college,
  that way i could always find work as a substitute
  teacher.

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Eight Different Outcomes

• I have gained skills such as how to help and
  communicate with someone who is not the same age
  as I am since I am so often talking to people of
  my age or older.
• Through mentoring, I have learned many new
  things, including how to deal with different
  people. Even though our mentees are obviously
  younger than we are, it is a way to learn to work
  with people who are different than we are.
• I did learn a little about how it can be
  challenging to motivate some students to work.
  Ive learned how to overcome some of these
  challenges as well. It isnt easy to mentor
  younger students but it is rewarding.

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So what happened?

• Two students pursuing teaching as a career.
• All participants were active in one or more
  organizations.
• Three students continued their service work, all
  report wanting to continue.
• Two students wanted to help teach FYS.
• All students reported having a good social
  network.
• All students report using support services.

Informal assessment of test group.
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Now what?

• Developing co-curricular service model for
  residence life and hall council staff.
• Finishing quantitative analysis of data.
• Checking up on students (non-research) at the end
  of the semester.

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Limitations

• Students get out what they put into the
  experience
• Faculty involvement
• Response rate in control groups
• Incoming attitudes
• Sample Size

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Acknowledgements

• Gail Kirby, my co-facilitator of FYS and research
  mentor
• FYS Students!!!
• Dr. Gerry Kowalski, Director of Residence
  Education and research mentor
• Miya Simpson, McNair Director

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Questions?