Faculty members in almost every department at Calvin College integrate Academically Based Service-Learning with the content of courses. These courses include relevant activities that provide a connection between theory and practice. By incorporating appropriate service experiences into our coursework, we seek to better understand how we can serve God in our chosen professions. ABSL courses are offered in a variety of disciplines from computer science to English to economics.
Why Incorporate ABSL into Your Class
We see academically based service as a strategy that will enrich your teaching and enhance a student's learning. It is not a replacement for traditional modes of classroom teaching, and it is not, of course, appropriate for every course and every professor. Nonetheless, academically based service is one more strategy to make your course more effective. Service-learning provides concrete experiences related to the themes and aims of a course along with opportunities for reflection and discussion. Students' thinking, as 
well as their lives, can be transformed. And all of this is clearly related to the understanding of the Christian life that informs the mission of Calvin.
Academically based service takes into consideration a variety of learning styles. It appeals especially to many of our students who are more experientially oriented, but those students with an analytical bent also benefit from opportunities to test theories via active experimentation and reflection. Thus academically based service is another vehicle for attending to diverse gifts and approaches to learning. Furthermore, ABSU gets beyond the walls of the classroom and outside the comfort zone of our campus and our community.
ABSL Class Options
Option A:
Service-learning in place of another course requirement without faculty involvement
- Students select an organization and are responsible for completing the work and connecting their experience to the course content.
- The challenge for some faculty is that the learning rewards for the students may not be as great because it is more difficult for students to connect their service-learning to the course content.
Option B:
Service-learning as a class option with faculty involvement
- Structured reflection, class discussions, or journaling
- The challenge for some faculty is the amount of commitement.
Option C:
Required service-learning with possible faculty involvement
- The service-learning is clearly related to the course. Students are expected to do certain things in their service-learning experience to fulfill course requirements.
- The challenge for some faculty is the time it takes to adjust the syllabi, be involved with students in critical reflection and demonstrate the integration of service-learning within the curriculum.
How to Implement ABSL
After you have thought about the major goals of your course and considered some of the ways service-learning might enhance your course, contact us.
The SLC can assist in the implementation by:
- Matching your course needs with the appropriate community service agencies
- Helping orient your students to the work
- Keeping records and evaluating the results
- Making available books, professional journals and sample syllabi
- Providing literature on how to handle student assessment and structured reflection
You will need to be very clear about the role of the service-learning project when your course meets on the first day of the semester. As the course progresses you will want to be especially insistent on integrating the classroom content with the service project. This necessary student reflection will only occur via your own modeling of service-learning.
