Adapted from Howard, Jeffery, ed., Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning: Service-Learning Course Design Workbook (University of Michigan: OCSL Press, 2001), pp. 16-19.

Principle 1: Academic Credit Is for Learning, Not for Service
Academic credit should not be awarded simply for performing service, but rather for the student's demonstration of academic and civic learning. Course goals and student learning should be assessed in rigorous manners regardless of whether they are reached through experiential or through more traditional means. Assessment tools should be designed that will measure student learning in multiple contexts.

Principle 2: Do Not Compromise Academic Rigor
Students engaged in service-learning should be provided with the same opportunities for academic rigor and should be assessed under equal, but different, criteria as are students engaged in non-service-based courses or projects.

Principle 3: Establish Learning Objectives
It is a service-learning maxim that one cannot develop a quality service-learning course without first setting explicit learning objectives that complement specific service opportunities. This principle is foundational to service-learning, as well as to choosing appropriate community partnerships through which learning goals can be met. Learning goals in the service-learning classroom, as in any other classroom, should be articulated clearly, as should criteria for student assessment. When appropriate, students can participate in the creation of learning goals and assessment criteria.

Principle 4: Establish Criteria for the Selection of Service-Learning Partnerships
Requiring students to serve in any community-based organization as part of a service-learning course is tantamount to requiring students to read any book as part of a traditional course. Faculty who are deliberate about establishing criteria for selecting service-learning partnerships will find that students are able to extract more relevant learning from their respective service experiences, and are more likely to meet course learning objectives, than are students who are engaged in academically inappropriate (if meaningful) service. Partnerships should be chosen with regard to the best fit between the needs of the community partner (as designated by the community partner) and learning goals/outcomes for the specific course.

Principle 5: Provide Educationally-Sound Learning Strategies To Harvest Community Learning and Realize Course Learning Objectives
Requiring service-learning students to merely record their service activities and hours is only a beginning, and on its own will not likely provide students with appropriate learning experiences. Reflective activities and journals should be explicit and directed in order to provide students with best learning outcomes.

Principle 6: Prepare Students for Learning from the Community
Most students lack experience with extracting and making meaning from experience and with merging it with other academic and civic course learning strategies. Even an exemplary reflection journal assignment, therefore, will yield uneven responses without sufficient support. When appropriate, allow for community partners to participate in student orientation, if possible as a guest speaker in the classroom.

Principle 7: Minimize the Distinction between the Students' Community Learning Role and Classroom Learning Role
Classrooms and communities provide very different learning contexts. Each can seem to require students to assume different learning roles and styles. A goal for reducing the differences lies in shaping the learning environments so that students assume similar learning roles in both contexts.

Principle 8: Rethink the Faculty Instructional Role
If faculty encourage students' active learning in the classroom and community, then what would allow for concomitant change in one's own teaching role? Commensurate with the proceeding principle's recommendation for active student learning, this principle advocates that service-learning teachers, too, rethink their roles.

Principle 9: Rethink the Role of Community Partners within the Course Structure, and be Flexible in Order to Achieve Reciprocal Service-Learning Goals
Beyond acting as recipients of student service, how can community partners help to define course objectives, syllabus and assignment design, or other aspects of student learning? Community partners should be well integrated into the design of the course and should be informed of student learning goals so that they can help to provide students with consistent and meaningful service experiences.

Principle 10: Maximize the Community Responsibility Orientation of the Course
One of the necessary aspects of a service-learning course is purposeful civic learning. Designing classroom norms and learning strategies that not only enhance academic learning but also encourage civic learning are essential to purposeful, engaged academic learning.

(Return to Service Learning Page)