Criteria for Offering Courses at The University of Texas at Austin

A service-learning course is an academic course that includes as part of its course requirements student participation in volunteer placement in a non-profit community organization or in other organized community service entities. The course clearly places academic learning at the center of the volunteer service experience by meeting the following criteria:

• Linking the volunteer service component directly to the academic learning objectives of the course. Service learning is first and foremost a mode for teaching and the specific volunteer activities must be theoretically sound relative to the academic/scholarly foundations of the course. The instructor shall be involved in creating and supervising the service activities associated with the course. The volunteer activities must be chosen to advance the scholarship and teaching objectives of the course. The instructor must be clear on these priorities and have them at the forefront in negotiating affiliations or other working relationships with community groups, entities, or agencies.
   
• Defining the volunteer service performed by students as meeting a community need, as defined by or developed collaboratively with the community entity. The instructor shall define a service that is responsive to a need identified by the community; the need shall be within the academic and professional expertise of the instructor as a scholar and teacher at The University of Texas at Austin, and the need shall be one that can be met (to some specific degree) by student involvement.
   
• Making an integral part of the course curriculum structured opportunities for students to critically reflect on the community service and synthesize these experiences with academic theories and concepts. Part of the community service activity must include class meetings apart from the service where the instructor engages the students in a critical examination of their performance, the soundness of the activity, and the impact on participants and the community organization. The instructor has the responsibility for assessing the students’ ability to synthesize theoretical concepts and service activities and providing students with on-going feedback.
   
• Evaluating the overall course performance of students based on their success at integrating the academic concepts of the course and the community service experience. The instructor must help students understand their responsibilities to both the academic and service components of the course and that simply completing the community service activities does not satisfy the course requirements. The instructor must act as a gatekeeper to prevent the volunteer service component from taking excessive amounts of time and contact.

Academic service-learning is different from an internship.
Internships typically offer a relatively independent involvement in a community placement with supervision. In an academic service-learning course, the volunteer/service component is directly linked to the academic learning objectives of a course and seeks to more critically engage community processes with academic preparation.

Academic service-learning is not volunteering.
Volunteering is simply that, volunteering. It is not related to the academic goals of a particular course although it is an important way to be involved in one’s community.

Examples include:

• Rhetoric and Composition: As part of their Rhetoric and Composition courses, students learn about the complex issues of hunger, homelessness and illiteracy by serving at food pantries and shelters, reading books on these topics, and then writing papers that integrate their experiences with the course readings.
   
• Environment: As part of their chemistry or environmental science courses, students join with community partners in helping to identify neighborhood homes that have unsafe levels of lead contamination.