The Community Resource Centre of North and Centre Wellington (CRC) collaborated with CESI’s Research Shop to complete a community mapping exercise with students from Central Wellington District High School in Fergus, Ontario. The goal of this exercise was to explore youth’s vision and understand their perspectives regarding their local communities. Students were asked to identify existing local spaces and resources they use and to discuss what would make their communities an ideal place to live.
Author(s):
Aarabhi Rajendiran, Courtney Primeau, Yuriko Cowper-Smith
Product(s):
Report
Program(s):
Research Shop
Project Partner(s):
Community Resource Centre of North and Centre Wellington
This experiential First Year Seminar course challenged students to think beyond volunteering and charity as the means to have a positive impact in the community. Over the course of one semester, interdisciplinary teams of students addressed specific challenges identified by community-partners using tools and techniques from lean business models and social enterprise startups.
For the duration of the course, students worked with one of two community partners to address a problem or issue that the partner organization was facing. Through lectures and guest speakers, students gained the terminology and technical knowledge needed to produce a final report. Students also gained professional experience aggregating their findings and presenting them to an audience in their end-of-term conference.
As the central focus of the class, students planned for, developed, and disseminated Knowledge Translation (KT) products to community partners. Along with the course instructor, students collectively monitored their progress over the semester and ultimately produced three projects each: an infographic, a taped media interview, and a newspaper/blog posting. Classes were a mix of guest lectures, workshop opportunities, instructor-led discussions and in-class assignments about evidence-based practice and knowledge translation.
Throughout this course, students worked with a community partner to analyze and approach broad social issues from a multidisciplinary perspective. A unique aspect of the course was that there were no clear rubrics or mark breakdowns established. Students were informed about bare minimum requirements, but were encouraged to think beyond how to perform to meet expectations, and engaged in conversations with the instructors regarding appropriate learning goals and outcomes based on their discipline and year-level.
As a mandatory course for the Masters of Applied Nutrition (MAN) program, students worked individually with a community partner to create and conduct an individual research project. Over three semesters, students learned skills and theoretical knowledge from guest lectures and applied those skills to their projects with the community partners.
Over two semesters, students worked in pairs to conduct a program evaluation to meet the needs of a community partner. Together, the course instructor and CESI staff composed a list of partners for the students to choose from, and the students were coached (through guest lectures and class sessions) on how to do community-engaged work and interact with their community partners.
As a capstone course for several streams of geography students, students worked in small groups to contact community partners and organize projects that aligned with their interests and the course learning objectives. The core of the course was a group project; in small teams, students identified a problem, designed a solution, gathered the necessary data, implemented the solution, and presented their results.
Working in groups of 2 or 3, students worked with community partners to complete several components of a program evaluation depending on the needs of the partner. Components included a program overview, exploratory assessment, logic model, evaluation questions and an evaluation framework. The instructor also hosted a workshop to inform participating community organizations about program evaluation.
Throughout the course, graduate students developed knowledge, skills and values related to the principles and practices of community-engaged scholarship (CES). Working with one community partner (varies each semester), they applied their knowledge to develop a product to solve a problem brought forward by the community partner.