Using a Service-Learning Pedagogy to Improve Student Engagement

Service-learning is a method of teaching that integrates community service into an academic course through applied learning to enrich the educational experience of students and meet the needs of the community. In this paper, we describe the integration of service-learning into an undergraduate industrial engineering course. Over the past three years, students in the course have worked with four community partners to complete service-learning projects. The community partners have included a high school, community library, local farm, and an assistive technology center. Students worked directly with community partners to improve operations and ergonomics within their facilities. Through the projects, students gained a deeper understand of the course content, as well as an appreciation of how industrial engineering can be applied to improve the community. In this paper, the structure of the service-learning project within the course is detailed. Quantitative and qualitative data from student participants are examined to explore the benefits of incorporating service-learning into the industrial engineering classroom. Recommendations for implementing service-learning in the classroom are also presented.