Chapter 2: Participating in Experiential and Community-Engaged Learning at McMaster
McMaster University has a long history of collaboration, both formal and informal, with our community. Much of it has been very positive and has led to reciprocal benefits. To guide McMaster’s collective pursuit of experiential and community-based learning, the university created the Office of Community Engagement. This is part of a purposeful approach to community-engaged learning at McMaster in an attempt to shape and promote principled, sustained and mutually-beneficial partnerships between students, instructors, researchers and community members. Important milestones in this effort have been developing, with the community, a set of six principles to guide community-engaged activity and a definition of community engagement at McMaster. Taken together, these create a framework for a positive, sustained, mutually-beneficial relationship and are designed to predict and hopefully prevent some problems that can stand in the way of a positive engagement.
Table 1 below contains some examples of community-engaged learning opportunities.
Benefits of Community-Engaged Experiential Education
Table 1: Benefits and Challenges of Community-Engaged Learning.
| Type of Community Engaged Experiential Learning | Example | Benefits | Challenges |
Community Exposure Activities
|
Attending the Annual General Meeting of an organization
Touring a social housing complex |
Low commitment, easy
Make facts and stories about communities more real |
The short amount of time does not let students explore and mediate assumptions
Often little benefit to the community |
| Community-Connected Course Projects | Science students deliver a nutrition workshop at a local Senior Centre
Social work students assess the accessibility of a new campus building Engineering students design assistive devices for community clients |
Allows students to participate in coursework that will/may be used by the community
Students may be motivated by real-world application of their work Students can delve deep into a project but still have instructor support/guidance |
Difficult to execute projects within the timeframe of a single academic term (i.e., project may be incomplete or continue beyond the end of the course) |
| Placements and Practica | Kinesiology students apply learning and practice skills at a physiotherapy clinic and learn how to perform simple treatments
Political Science students work with a city committee to increase voter turnout |
Students develop “real-world” skills
Students build relationships and social networks that may lead to future employment opportunities Community organizations benefit from students’ time, energy and creativity |
High commitment from community partner (i.e., community provides training and supervision)
The connection between classroom theory and real-world practice may not be clear |
Community-engaged experiential education includes learning activities that benefit both the community and the student (OCE, CE Education Toolkit, 2018).
Community-engaged experiential education can benefit students by:
- Allowing students to develop a variety of skills (e.g., critical thinking, problem-solving, leadership, communication)
- Allowing students to apply theory to real-life scenarios, and through reflection, increase their understanding of the material learned in class
- Enhancing social awareness, responsibility, and citizenship
- Allowing students to explore their educational, career, and/or professional goals
- Improving academic performance
Community-engaged education can benefit community members and groups by:
- Providing them with access to up-to-date knowledge and skills that students have gained through their academic learning
- Addressing their organizational needs or enhancing projects by providing additional student input that can complement staff resources and knowledge
- Connecting them with faculty and staff expertise that could further support their mission
- Being an active participant and mentor in student learning
Compare & Contrast: Differentiating Community-Engaged Experiential Education from Non-Community-Engaged Experiential Education
Which of the activities below are examples of community-engaged experiential learning, and which are examples of non-community-engaged experiential learning? Please click and drag the activities on the right into their respective categories on the left. When you are finished, select the blue “check” icon to check your answers!
