Service Learning

Service-Learning and Community Service: What's the Difference?

There several key distinction to be made between community service and service-learning:

Service-learning uses community service as the vehicle for students to reach their academic goals and objectives.
Service-learning provides structured opportunities for students to reflect critically on their experience through a mix of writing, reading, speaking, listening, creating, and small and large group discussions.
Service-learing identifies in advance, and tracks, specific learning objectives and goals.
Community service fills a need in the community through volunteer efforts. Service-learning also fills that need, but uses that need as a foundation to examine ourselves, our society, and our future.
The goal of service-learning is to empower those being served and those who serve. This may or may not be the goal of community service.