Student, Community, and Faculty Perspectives on 4th-year and Graduate-Level Community Engaged Learning Experiences

Lindsey Thomson, our Community Engaged Learning Manager, and Mavis Morton and Jeji Varghese, professors in Sociology at the University of Guelph have been conducting research on student, community, and faculty perspectives of 4th-year and graduate-level community engaged learning experiences. Community Engaged Teaching and Learning (CETL) is receiving more attention in the literature as community engagement is more frequently included as a priority in university strategic plans. A major goal for this research is to add knowledge and assessment tools for those practicing community-engaged learning, and specifically inform the work of CESI and the College of Social and Applied Human Sciences (CSAHS).

The main research questions aim to address:

• How learners’ understandings of community engagement change before and after a CEL course;
• If CEL contributes to the fulfillment of learning outcomes in each specific course, and if so, in what ways, and;
• What the experiences with CEL are from instructor, student, and community partner perspectives.

To address these questions, the research will use a mixed methods approach to gather faculty, student, and community perspectives on CEL. The research adds to the emerging body of literature around CEL by increasing the presence of community perspectives, providing new insights into graduate student training, and by providing new tools and insights into assessing students’ understanding of CEL.