Osborne, Hammerich and Hensley
that are beyond the normal scope of their lives.
Additional data has assessed the impact of the
Corporation for National Service Learn and Serve
America, Higher Education initiative (LSAHE).
Community service agencies receiving the contributions of students through LSAHE overwhelmingly
endorsed the strengths of such students. Among other
things, these agencies claimed that LSAHE students
were: (1) highly effective in promoting the goals of
the agencies they served, (2) very effective in comparison to traditional volunteers or even other students from non-LSAHE schools, and (3) especially
skilled in working with community youth (Gray,
Ondaatje, Geschwind, Robyn, & Klein, 1996).
The Impact of Service-Learning on Student
Learning. A third area of interest focuses on the
extent to which the service-learning experience has
an impact on student learning of course content. To
date few studies have examined this. Osborne
(1998) compared students completing a servicelearning research project within a social psychology
course to a matched sample of students completing
the traditional research project in the same course.
The written work of the service-learning students
was consistently rated by naive judges to have more
successfully accomplished the two course goals of
application of ethics in research and integration of
the research method into course assignments.
Astin and Sax (1997) showed that the number of
months in which the students engaged in servicelearning had a significant impact on, "the student's
commitment to help others in difficulty, knowledge
of a field or discipline, ability to think critically, and
understanding of problems facing the nation and the
local community" (p. 9).
Weaknesses in Service-Learning Research. There
clearly are non-academic benefits to be gained from
the utilization of service-learning, such as increased
(1) civic skills, (2) moral development, and (3) prosocial decision-making (Batchelder & Root, 1994;
Barber, Higgins, Smith, & Ballou, 1997; Boss, 1994).
Indeed, it appears that service-learning experiences
are having a positive impact on many of the qualities
that we value in our students. Students perceive themselves as having learned more, appear to be more likely to persist and graduate, and are perceived as effective by the community agencies they serve.
While this data is encouraging, many of these
studies are still vulnerable to Astin and Sax's (1997)
point that, "such research is generally limited by
relying on small samples of students from a single
institution." In addition, the critical question of the
impact of service-learning on students' learning of
specific course content remains largely unexplored.
Even those studies that have addressed the issue of
learning of course content have rarely involved
more than student self-reports of such impact or a
comparison of project or course grades (Giles &
Eyler, 1998). Does finding a substantial increase in
course grades for those students opting to engage in
the service-learning project truly correlate the service-learning and the academic learning?
The answer is no. Astin and Sax (1997) found that
students engaging in service-learning projects were
significantly more likely than non-service-learning
participants to spend 20 hours per week or more
studying and preparing for classes. In contrast, the
non-service-learning students were significantly more
likely than their service-learning counterparts to
engage in three hours or less of studying than their
service-learning counterparts. These numbers alone
can explain differences in course grades. Clearly,
there are differences between students who study 20
hours per week and those who study three. But we
cannot link those differences to service-learning
alone. It is just as likely that the students who are willing to work harder are also more willing to opt for a
service-learning project when it is offered in a course.
What is Needed. In order to assess the impact of
service-learning on students' learning of course content and on student development course objectives,
we must specifically design courses in ways that
allow such data to be gathered. Unfortunately, many
faculty reach the end of a service-learning course
before considering what data might document the
impact of the service-learning (one of the co-authors
of this article, who serves as Coordinator for the
campus Office of Service-Learning, knows firsthand that this happens more often than many would
think). But good research in this area will help to
illuminate what changes do take place as a function
of service-learning experiences, what changes do
not take place, and how to design a service-learning
experience that maximizes the likelihood that students change in desirable directions.
But this is not enough. Clearly there are methodological concerns and additional outcomes to be
considered before service-learning advocates can
properly substantiate some of the many student benefits attributable to service-learning.
The next generation of service-learning impact
studies must be influenced by what faculty perceive
to be important in their instructional roles. Faculty
who do migrate toward service-learning expect that it
will positively impact students in ways that more
"traditional" pedagogies do not. Non-academic benefits are unlikely to motivate many faculty who have
not yet tried service-learning. Indeed, most faculty
will be persuaded to incorporate service-learning into
their courses to the extent that service-learning can
be shown to impact the learning of course content.
Though some recent efforts have begun to move
