AAC&U News | June 2005

Community Service Deepens Student Learning and Civic Engagement at Wagner College

Wagner College, a liberal arts institution located in Staten Island, New York, has developed a reputation in recent years for its innovative approach to experiential learning. The college's core curriculum, the Wagner Plan, combines classroom learning with opportunities to "learn by doing"--through internships, service learning, and various forms of fieldwork. This year, TIAA-CREF recognized Wagner for its use of community-based learning in the first-year curriculum with the Theodore M. Hesburgh Award.

Assessing the impact of experiential learning, however, can be challenging. At Wagner, faculty and administrators have purposely linked community learning experiences to classroom learning, and have developed various tools to assess the affect of those experiences on civic engagement as well as other learning outcomes. Through a combination of student and supervisor surveys, reflective writing assignments, and senior-year assessments in the major, Wagner is gaining insight into how hands-on experience can deepen student learning.

Why Service Learning?

Wagner's current experiential learning program has its origins in the late 1990s, when the college was rethinking its academic direction. Richard Guarasci, who was hired as provost in 1997 and has since become president of Wagner, proposed that the college adopt a new general education plan that would combine liberal arts classes with experiential learning. The resulting curriculum, the Wagner Plan, was approved by the faculty in 1997 and launched for all entering students in 1998.

Julia Barchitta, Wagner's dean of learning communities, has been responsible for helping faculty arrange experiential learning placements under the Wagner Plan. Barchitta's background in nursing--truly a "learn-by-doing profession," she notes--has given her a special appreciation of the possibilities of experiential learning. "I don't think anyone learns as well as when they are actually doing," says Barchitta. "The hands-on approach opens your mind and your eyes to what's going on in the world."

Wagner's emphasis on service and practical experience is meant both to enrich learning and to broaden students' understanding of community engagement. One of the hallmarks of the Wagner Plan is its use of New York City as a vast educational resource--rather than being walled off from the city, Wagner students contribute to, and learn from, the communities beyond the campus. Barchitta sees this approach as especially important at a predominantly residential college like Wagner, which draws students from across the country. Service learning, she explains, is "a way of getting students to know the community outside of the college," giving them "the opportunity to learn firsthand about the community they're living in, under supervision where there is some discussion and some critical thinking . . . about the issues that they are coming across."

The Wagner Plan

The Wagner Plan is built around learning communities--sets of thematically linked courses in different disciplines. Wagner requires its students to enroll in learning communities in their first semester, once in their sophomore or junior year, and in their senior year.

First-year students choose one of the more than twenty learning communities--all taught by full-time faculty members--that are offered each year. These first-year communities include two linked courses from different disciplines and one "reflective tutorial" as well as required fieldwork. Topics for first-year learning communities cover many themes, from "Wealth and War" (which pairs courses in politics and macroeconomics) to "Science and Mathematics in the Everyday World" (which pairs physics and mathematics) to "Diversity at Home and Abroad" (which pairs Spanish and philosophy). The reflective tutorial, which doubles as Wagner's English composition requirement, gives students the opportunity to discuss their field-based learning with faculty and to reflect on their experiences in writing.

All students in first-year learning communities devote at least three hours a week to experiential learning. Some work under the supervision of external agencies--at hospitals, museums, or historical sites, for example; others pursue field-based research under faculty supervision. All of these activities, according to Julia Barchitta, give students the opportunity to learn firsthand about real-world issues. As an example, she describes one learning community that for four years brought students to a Superfund site in Toms River, New Jersey, where students interviewed cancer victims, politicians, real-estate agents, chemical-corporation representatives, and other community members to learn about--and document--the many dimensions of a complex social and ecological problem.

Wagner again requires fieldwork in the senior year (in the intermediate years, internships and study abroad are encouraged but not required). Students in the senior learning communities take a capstone course that is linked to a reflective tutorial and to at least one hundred hours of experiential learning. Unlike the first-year program, however, completing the senior program means undertaking a project that is related to the major--a student majoring in the performing arts, for instance, might arrange the staging of a play, while a senior in the sciences might conduct laboratory research to satisfy this requirement.

Assessing Experiential Learning

Wagner College has developed several assessment tools to measure what students learn through fieldwork and volunteer activities. These tools help Wagner identify strengths and weaknesses in the program; they also help the school understand how students are connecting their experiences with their coursework.

Julia Barchitta and learning-community faculty gather basic feedback on the experiential component of the Wagner Plan through surveys. In the first year of the Wagner Plan, all students complete a survey in which they indicate how beneficial their community experience was, the degree to which it made their coursework more meaningful, and how it affected their sense of civic responsibility. Students are surveyed again in their senior year, when they respond to questions about the overall usefulness of their fieldwork and the supportiveness of the college. At the same time, site supervisor surveys provide insight into student attitudes and performance from the perspective of those who oversee the volunteers.

Faculty gain a more substantive picture of student learning from reflective tutorials in first- and senior-year learning communities. Designed to link together the various elements of the learning communities, the reflective tutorials provide opportunities for students to discuss how experiential learning relates to what they have learned in their classes. In the first-year tutorials, students also are required to reflect on their experiences in a journal; as Julia Barchitta points out, these journals can be used to assess writing, but they also contain detailed evidence of how and what students learn through their experiences in the community.

Senior-year departmental assessments offer another perspective on experiential learning. "Each department," Barchitta explains, has recently drafted "its own mission statement and goals, and has developed different tools for assessing if their seniors have accomplished what they feel they should accomplish." Although designed to measure student performance in the majors, these departmental assessments often include questions about fieldwork and the practical applications of disciplinary knowledge.

Assessment data collected since the Wagner Plan was launched 1998 suggest that student responses to the program have been positive, and, moreover, that they have been improving in nearly every area surveyed. Barchitta attributes this trend to several factors: experiential learning is becoming a part of campus culture, for faculty as well as students; many logistical issues, such as transportation to and from sites, have been resolved since the program was launched; and the Wagner Plan is now attracting students who have a special interest in civic engagement. Finally, the many faculty development opportunities associated with the Wagner plan, including regular workshops and retreats, are paying off. "Faculty have truly taken ownership of the program," Barchitta says--a development that is essential to the success of any attempt to reform general education or implement assessment on campus.

For more information about the Wagner Plan, visit Wagner College's Web site.

AAC&U has many resources on assessment and civic engagement available online. The association's recently released board statement, Our Students' Best Work: A Framework for Accountability Worthy of Our Mission, offers an approach to assessment that takes account of the complexity of college-level learning and the diversity of American colleges and universities.