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Faculty may:
• Encounter questions from students that may be hard to
answer
• Find it difficult to allow time and space in the course
curriculum for consideration of unexpected learning that
occurs in the community (service-learning often requires
flexibility and a willingness to adapt the course as it progresses
in response to students’ community learning experiences)
• Be reluctant to change and/or cut down on readings or other
assignments and/or revise course learning objectives to
accommodate service-learning (which can lead to treating
service-learning like an add-on and not an integral part of the
course)
• Feel unsure about how to assess students’ learning
• Worry that there will be no professional reward or recognition
for teaching with service-learning, which others may view as
“soft,” non-rigorous, or non-academic, and not as valuable as
research.
Community partners may:
• Be reluctant to take on students with such a limited time
commitment, or to offer them meaningful work opportunities
(they need to balance their investment of time and energy
with the likely return, and consider whether short-term
volunteers could actually do more harm than good)
• Experience challenges recruiting service-learners due to
location, schedule, and transportation issues
• Have difficulty matching students’ and instructors’ hopes/
expectations for students’ experiences with the work the
community needs done
• Find it difficult to allot staff time for training and supervising
students and engaging them in reflection
• Feel hesitant about engaging in a partnership with the
University because of past experiences of being “used” by
researchers.