DEVELOPING LEADERSHIP SKILLS THROUGH SERVICE LEARNING COURSES
In recent years, leadership training and service learning have been emphasized as important skills for employability. Service learning itself has a positive impact on leadership development. In this article, the author aims to give higher education faculty direction in planning, developing, and implementing a service-learning course aimed to help students develop their leadership skills through experiential learning. The author suggested keys to success after analyzing multi-source feedback and making design and teaching refinements on a service-learning course called ‘Community Leadership’ over 8 years.
In order to design the course, the author researched other universities and …show more content…
The author recommended beginning the project selection process a couple of months before the start of the course. After receiving project proposals from community leaders, the author allowed the registered students to read them and rank their preferences, enabling him to give all students one of their top two or three choices. In order to maximize leadership learning, he further recommended that the project be broken into components that each student in a group could manage …show more content…
The author gathered feedback from students and community leaders each year in order to develop a successful service learning and leadership development course. Overall, what students most liked about the course included: working with local community members, having practical leadership experience, the flexibility and freedom of the projects, and working outside the classroom. The author provided year-by-year data on the suggestions for improvement and on the biggest challenges encountered by the students. These include: community leaders providing more specifics in their project proposals, procrastination and time management, avoiding projects with political implications or motivations, and having more relevant guest speakers.
The author met these challenges in a number of ways. He addressed project specificity issues by providing the community leaders with a project proposal template including the desired scope of the work and collecting drafts of project proposals, encouraging students to address clarity issues immediately and requiring three mandatory meetings between the students and community
In recent years, leadership training and service learning have been emphasized as important skills for employability. Service learning itself has a positive impact on leadership development. In this article, the author aims to give higher education faculty direction in planning, developing, and implementing a service-learning course aimed to help students develop their leadership skills through experiential learning. The author suggested keys to success after analyzing multi-source feedback and making design and teaching refinements on a service-learning course called ‘Community Leadership’ over 8 years.
In order to design the course, the author researched other universities and …show more content…
The author recommended beginning the project selection process a couple of months before the start of the course. After receiving project proposals from community leaders, the author allowed the registered students to read them and rank their preferences, enabling him to give all students one of their top two or three choices. In order to maximize leadership learning, he further recommended that the project be broken into components that each student in a group could manage …show more content…
The author gathered feedback from students and community leaders each year in order to develop a successful service learning and leadership development course. Overall, what students most liked about the course included: working with local community members, having practical leadership experience, the flexibility and freedom of the projects, and working outside the classroom. The author provided year-by-year data on the suggestions for improvement and on the biggest challenges encountered by the students. These include: community leaders providing more specifics in their project proposals, procrastination and time management, avoiding projects with political implications or motivations, and having more relevant guest speakers.
The author met these challenges in a number of ways. He addressed project specificity issues by providing the community leaders with a project proposal template including the desired scope of the work and collecting drafts of project proposals, encouraging students to address clarity issues immediately and requiring three mandatory meetings between the students and community