2024 CCSC NE Tutorial #

At the 2024 CCSC Northeast Region Conference, we organized a tutorial session on evaluating service-learning project feasibility, with a focus on selecting projects that align with course goals and working with service-learning partners to revise them in ways that prioritize student learning outcomes. We introduced participants to our conversation guide and the SPSG Project Feasibility Evaluation Rubric, both designed to support meaningful pre-project discussions with nonprofit partners. We began with an overview of common challenges when embedding service-learning into computing courses, especially in contexts where institutional infrastructure is limited. Participants were walked through several case studies that reflected real-world project vetting scenarios from our own experiences, some that successfully turned into student projects and others that did not. Participants then used the conversation guide and rubric to evaluate these scenarios, identify risks, and suggest modifications that could make the projects more viable for a single semester course. A central focus of the session was the importance of working with nonprofit stakeholders ahead of time to set expectations and establish a shared understanding that the primary goal of the project is student learning. We discussed how this partnership approach can help identify project adjustments that reduce risk to the nonprofit’s mission while still offering a valuable learning experience for students. Feasibility concerns that came up during group discussion included:

• Fitting meaningful service-learning into a single semester
• Strategies for handling maintenance after the course ends
• How to negotiate project scope to reduce risk to student learning

Participants also asked questions about how we structure our courses, including:

• How do you manage stakeholder relationships?
• How do you communicate to stakeholders that student learning is the priority?
• What strategies have worked for multi-semester projects?