Office of Civic Engagement

Suggestion for designing a course with a civic engagement component:

Begin by thinking about your course and how it can be connected to community issues and concerns.

Consider the following set of questions as you begin to design civic engagement into your course:

1. What are my course objectives and goals?
2. Are there community issues that are directly connected to my course?
3. Is there a connection between my course objectives and goals and issues in the community?
4. How would adding this component enhance my teaching?
5. What am I hoping my students will learn through working in the community?
6. What questions do I want my students to raise and answer by the end of the semester?
7. How will I help students connect their work in the community with the course content?
8. What theories or knowledge base will my students need in order to understand this connection?
9. In what capacity or role do I want my students to be engaged in the community?
10. Which service-learning model fits best with my course learning objectives? (See Six Models for Service Learning handout).
11. Will the community work be mandatory for all students or optional?
12. What in my current course syllabus am I willing to remove in order to integrate civic engagement?
13. How many hours of community work will I require of my students?
14. What percentage of the course grade will the community work account for?
15. Will I require my students to maintain an hourly log to verify their hours in the community?
16. How will I assess the students’ learning and evaluate the service-learning component?
17. What level of support would I like to receive from OCE in designing and implementing service-learning into my course?