Cognitive Mapping In Service Learning And Civic Engagement In A Studio Course With An Ada Accessible Project

Research findings confirm that service learning can benefit students, faculty, institutions, and communities by offering “real world” experience to students and quality design solutions to communities or organizations. 2, 7 Currently, many universities have integrated service learning and civic engagement in university mission statement and curricula. However, the students’ emotional and psychological pattern in the design process through service learning has not been explored. This paper presents the result of the assessment of a service-learning project in a studio course for sophomore students majoring in interior design. The project is to design a single family house for Habitat for Humanity with an ADA accessible bath and kitchen. Data from students’ reflective journals is used to draw a descriptive map of the social-psychological stages that occur during service-learning. In addition, textual analysis reveals that students progress through three identifiable stages of development: exciting but lost, comfortable, and engagement. The recommendations were made to the body of knowledge of service learning. To increase the effectiveness of service-learning outcomes, faculty members must understand these specific cognitive processes that accompany community-based learning. Statement of Purpose This paper addresses the social-psychological aspects of students’ participation in the design process of an ADA accessible project for Habitat for Humanity (Habitat). Habitat is a self-help housing organization devoted to build “simple, decent, and affordable” housing for low income families. Homes are built using volunteer labor and are sold at no profit, with no interest charge on the mortgage. Accessibility is an important issue in current housing design for Habitat. An accessible house is one that can be approached, entered, and used independently by people with mobile disabilities. The nature of the project provides unique opportunities for students to understand the role of public service in making meaningful social contributions. This is a 4-week studio project that joins students, faculty and community partners together. Besides traditional design studio activities, students, faculty, and community partners worked together to help students experience a real project design process and real client interactions. Students have the opportunity to explore the links between community service and interior design. This project addresses several 2007 CIDA (Council for Interior Design Accreditation) 4 indicators regarding codes and regulations, barrier-free design guideline, as well as professional values and community service. The reason this course differs from most other courses is the students’ work and design will become a community partners’ potential design solutions. According to Dewey’s 6 learning-by-doing theories, participation, or doing action involved in learning experience can lead to personal growth and professional growth. Service-learning in higher education is intended to increase students’ civic responsibility and enhance learning. The P ge 13299.2 2 hypothesis was that engaging in service learning enhanced learning outcomes, and it benefits both students and community partners. While a quantitative assessment of these two outcomes has dominated existing literature, 11 this paper explores the cognitive processes that students undergo during the community service learning experience. Data obtained from reflective journals draws a descriptive map of students’ psychological stages that occur during servicelearning. In addition to reflections from journals, a summative assessment method was used in this course to measure the learning outcomes. Review of Literature Emotional and Psychological pattern in Participation of a Service Learning Project Service learning is a credit-bearing educational experience in which students participate in an organized service activity that meets identified community needs and reflects on the service activity in such a way so as to gain further understanding of course content, a broader appreciation of the discipline, and an enhanced sense of civic responsibility. Community oriented service learning offers a positive outcome for all involved parties by providing resources to fulfill community needs that would otherwise be left unattended. The academic curriculum is also enhanced, regardless of the field of study, in three critical areas of student development: ”relevant and meaningful service to community”, “purposeful civic learning”, and “enhanced academic learning”. 8 It is obvious that service-learning differs from professional internship or volunteerism since the activity always takes place within a curricular infrastructure. Service-learning is a method of teaching, learning and reflecting that combines academic classroom curriculum with meaningful service to the community. As a teaching methodology, it falls under the philosophy of experiential education. More specifically, it integrates meaningful community service with instruction and reflection to enrich the learning experience, teach civic responsibility, encourage lifelong civic engagement, and strengthen communities for the common good. Service-learning researchers and practitioners agree that reflection is the essential link between community experience and academic learning: reflection is the hyphen in service-learning. 11 However, the theoretical and pedagogical foundations for service-learning reflection pays scant attention to the emotional content and context of student service experience or to the positive role emotion may play in helping students connect experience with academic study. Recent research in cognitive psychology and neuroscience reveals emotion's central role throughout the thinking and learning process 9 . Therefore, exploring students’ emotional and psychological pattern in service learning process becomes an important part of adding valuable suggestions to the body of knowledge of service learning and to improve the effectiveness of engaging in the service-learning teaching method. John Dewey’s related concerns to revitalize education and to rebuild community and democracy at the local level have powerfully appealed to service-learning advocates. Yet rarely have students been engaged directly as neighborhood organizers, a role that, from Dewey’s perspective, would appear to have great educational and social promise. 5 Although there are P ge 13299.3 3 amount of literatures regarding service learning based on John Dewey’s theory, there is little literature that explains students’ emotional and psychological pattern during the process of participation in designing service learning project. This paper explores this area by using the data from students’ reflective journal. The method of data analysis is statistics analysis software called “SPSS”. The system will draw the curves after the data is imported in the system. Assessment of Service Learning Outcomes Ash 1 indicated that intentionally linking the assessment of student learning outcomes of servicelearning with reflection allows each to inform and reinforce the other. Tracing the evolution of a strategy that uses reflection products as data sources to assess and improve both individual student learning and a program-wide approach to reflection is an effective way of assessment. Ash used two tools to guide the process of reflective writing in two courses. Associated rubrics were used to evaluate the quality of thinking demonstrated in the written reflection. Ash’s results suggest that these tools can improve students’ higher order reasoning abilities and critical thinking skills relative to academic enhancement, civic engagement, and personal growth. As a result, students can improve the overall quality of their thinking and learning. Based on this research finding, reflective journals were used as a data source to assess learning outcomes and draw cognitive maps, which is the purpose of this study. One of the learning outcomes in this course is to obtain knowledge of ADA design standards for bath and kitchen design. There are two main types of assessment: • Summative assessment Summative assessment is generally carried out at the end of a course or project. In an educational setting, summative assessments are typically used to assign students a course grade. • Formative assessment Formative assessment is generally carried out throughout a course or project. Formative assessment, also referred to as educative assessment, is used to aid learning. In an educational setting, formative assessment might be a teacher or a mentor (or a peer), or the learner, providing feedback on a student's work, and would not necessarily be used for grading purposes. Therefore, in addition to writing a reflective journal, which is a formative assessment, a summative assessment was utilized at the end of the semester. The summative assessment is a written exam that contained multiple choices, fill in blanks, and open ended questions. The summative assessment concentrated on ADA design principles and regulations. The formative assessment focused on the emotional and psychological impact during the service learning process.