Student Experiences in Service-Learning: Engineering vs. Sciences

The cognitive and affective benefits of service-learning (S-L) for students have been well documented, and S-L has become more common in many disciplines, including engineering, the health sciences, and education. Opportunities in the core sciences, however, seem sparse. This paper compares the attitudes of science majors and engineering majors toward S-L through quantitative analysis of survey responses. The goal is to examine student experience and learning in the context of other factors that might influence participation in S-L, such as institutional support, faculty attitudes, and the intrinsic level of applicability of course material to community issues. In the 2011-2012 academic year, 162 students in 9 courses in a College of Sciences participated in S-L projects and were surveyed about their experience. These responses are compared to those of 811 students in 33 courses from the College of Engineering, who completed the same survey; 93% of engineering students surveyed had done S-L that semester and/or previously. Compared to science majors, engineering students reported a significantly (5% level) stronger positive effect of S-L on their persistence in their major, their interest in the subject matter of the course, their ability to plan and carry out a project for the community, and their ability to address complex, open-ended problems. Some conjectures can be made about the reasons for the difference: valuing applied work over theoretical work is part of the engineering identity, and makes S-L a rewarding experience for engineers in particular; institutional acknowledgement of the value of S-L in the College of Engineering has a positive effect on faculty’s involvement with, and thus students’ reception of, the projects; engineering course material is intrinsically more applicable to community issues than science course material.