Location
Price, UT
Start Date
5-13-2025 1:30 PM
End Date
5-13-2025 2:20 PM
Description
Learning communities (LCs) are a designated high-impact practice (HIP) defined as "a group of people who share common academic goals and attitudes and meet semi-regularly to collaborate on classwork" – a shared goal unites members. In higher ed, LCs are often presented as cohort-based, inter-disciplinary learning experiences, such as first-year learning communities, where the student membership defines the community. Here, I propose that an LC can be defined by a community-partnered, project-based service-learning endeavor that broadens the impact of community engagement by bringing together a diverse set of students, professors, courses, and community members to produce lasting social impact via a large-scale deliverable. Here, I present a case study centered around my "Plant Education Walk Learning Model" that showcases a 1.5-year partnership with Orem City to create a public, interactive learning space within the Orem City Arboretum geared towards promoting public engagement and education of science, botany, and environmental stewardship. This LC brings together students and professors across multiple courses in Biology, Botany, and Digital Media, and community partners with such diverse titles as city project manager, communications manager, urban forester, and marketing. In this panel, you will hear the "community amplified voices" of student, professor, partner, and the public via first-person accounts (written, recorded, in-person) of how this LC broadens the impact of community engagement from the perspective of stakeholder representatives. We discuss how this case study crosscuts across HIPs, impacts on students, community, and the public, and the challenges, triumphs, and logistics that come with such an endeavor.
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Included in
Broadening Impact of Community Engagement Through a Community-Partnered, Project-Based Service-Learning Community
Price, UT
Learning communities (LCs) are a designated high-impact practice (HIP) defined as "a group of people who share common academic goals and attitudes and meet semi-regularly to collaborate on classwork" – a shared goal unites members. In higher ed, LCs are often presented as cohort-based, inter-disciplinary learning experiences, such as first-year learning communities, where the student membership defines the community. Here, I propose that an LC can be defined by a community-partnered, project-based service-learning endeavor that broadens the impact of community engagement by bringing together a diverse set of students, professors, courses, and community members to produce lasting social impact via a large-scale deliverable. Here, I present a case study centered around my "Plant Education Walk Learning Model" that showcases a 1.5-year partnership with Orem City to create a public, interactive learning space within the Orem City Arboretum geared towards promoting public engagement and education of science, botany, and environmental stewardship. This LC brings together students and professors across multiple courses in Biology, Botany, and Digital Media, and community partners with such diverse titles as city project manager, communications manager, urban forester, and marketing. In this panel, you will hear the "community amplified voices" of student, professor, partner, and the public via first-person accounts (written, recorded, in-person) of how this LC broadens the impact of community engagement from the perspective of stakeholder representatives. We discuss how this case study crosscuts across HIPs, impacts on students, community, and the public, and the challenges, triumphs, and logistics that come with such an endeavor.