What Is the Long-Term, Real-World Value of CBL?: Assessing Impact from the Perspective of Former Students

Abstract

This study examines the post-course impact of community-based learning (CBL) on undergraduate students enrolled in a CBL course from one of four undergraduate degree programs at a large, public university. Mixed methods analysis of survey and interview data show that CBL experiences supported holistic development for students, including in the areas of civic, personal, professional, and academic growth, while also highlighting the value of team- and project-based CBL and “real-world” skill building. Results also show faculty experience significantly affects students’ perceived outcomes.

This article examines the perceptions of former students about the long-term value of community-based learning (CBL). While universities frame CBL as a high-impact, experiential pedagogy that creates mutually beneficial outcomes for students and communities (AAC&U, 2019; Holland & Robinson, 2008), research that examines the longer-term impact of CBL on student development is still needed (Carlisle et al., 2017; Clayton et al., 2013; Finley & McNair, 2013; Hatcher et al., 2017; Kiely, 2004). By building upon prior research on the long-term value of CBL (Battistoni & Mitchell, 2018; Hill et al., 2017; Ruiz & Warchal, 2013), this study is intended to help institutions design transformational learning experiences that last (Clayton et al., 2013; Finley & McNair, 2013; Kiely, 2004; Merrill & Pusch, 2007). In particular, this study examines the long-term impact of CBL on students from across four undergraduate programs and 18 sections of courses taught between 2013 and 2017 at a Masters Large, public, comprehensive liberal arts university in the US Midwest.

We address three research questions. First, what do former undergraduate students perceive as the long-term impact from their community-based learning courses? Second, in what ways have they found lessons learned or skills developed to be of value in their civic, personal, professional, and academic lives? Third, what are their suggestions for improving the impact of CBL courses? To answer these questions, we apply a mixed method approach to analyze former students’ perceptions using data gathered from a structured online survey and follow-up phone interview.

This study makes multiple contributions to the CBL literature. First, by building upon prior work examining deep learning (Ibrahim et al., 2016; Nelson Laird et al., 2008) and the post-course impact of CBL (Battistoni & Mitchell, 2018; Mitchell et al., 2013), this study confirms the value of CBL for personal, professional, and civic life post-graduation while also highlighting the challenges experienced during and since the course. Participants reported the most long-term benefit from aspects of the experience that they considered to be the most challenging at the time. Second, this study affirms and complicates earlier findings that indicate CBL benefits from reflective, relational, scaffolded project- and place-based learning experiences. Third, the data also show faculty experience significantly impacts students’ long-term perceptions of the CBL experience, complicating any discussion of improving the impact of CBL courses on students’ long-term outcomes. With our findings in mind, we provide recommendations for improving the long-term impact of CBL.

The following sections provide a brief review of the literature, description of the research design and methods, presentation of the findings, discussion of the implications and limitations of the results, and recommendations for future research.

Literature Review

Theoretical Framework and Methodological Approach

Given our (a) desire to contribute to the development of relevant research practices and findings in the field, (b) similar theoretical and practical commitments between our own CBL practices and those of Mitchell et al. (2019), and (c) similarities and differences between the design of their programs and our own courses, we chose to largely model our study after theirs while integrating questions on deep learning from Nelson Laird et al. (2008). In particular, we were interested in exploring how our CBL courses yielded deep learning that built students’ civic and professional capacities.

We valued how the three programs analyzed in Mitchell et al. (2019) and Mitchell et al. (2011) were committed to fostering civic identity and agency, understood as the development of commitments “to the fundamental values of diversity, social justice, and active citizenship” (Mitchell et al., 2011, p. 117). Informed by Longo and Gibson (2011), Boyte (2008), Knefelkamp (2008), and Colby et al. (2007), they argue that fostering civic identity and agency through CBL requires that educators situate social issues in their historical and social complexities, engage students in relationships over time with diverse others, and ask students to apply their knowledge and skills to social challenges through collaborative reflective-praxis. In order to support the development of students’ civic identity and agency, all three programs in Battistoni and Mitchell’s (2018) study required scaffolded and extended community engagement designed to support relational, project-based learning and the development of leadership skills.

Following their survey design, our own survey integrated the Program Participation, Personal Attitudes, Traits, and Skills, as well as the current work life scales, adapting the sections slightly to fit our course and program-specific context. We also included survey questions from Nelson Laird et al.’s (2008) study because we wanted to understand whether our courses yielded deep learning. Of the 14 questions asked on their “Assess HIP Implementation Quality” survey, we integrated four directly and modified three to fit the CBL dimensions of our study.[4] In finalizing survey questions, the research team consulted with a focus group of recent alumni from our programs.[5] The final survey asked students to reflect on how their CBL experience affected their perspectives and personal and career choices, how helpful the CBL course has been since graduation, whether they maintain relationships with classmates, and how the course could have been improved (to review the survey questions analyzed in our article, see Appendix A).

Survey and follow-up interview recruitment occurred over the fall of 2018 with data analysis occurring early in 2019.[6] Interviews were semi-structured, designed concurrently with the survey to probe more deeply than the survey into the why and how. The survey and interviews sought to examine not only the impact of CBL experiences on students then and now but also why and how they felt these outcomes emerged. The interview questions allowed former students to explain their experience and perspective, which proved valuable in providing additional detail and clarity on the open-ended survey data. Like these instruments, ours assessed former students’ perceptions of the impact and value of their CBL experiences. The survey items and interview questions were pilot tested with a focus group of former students who participated in a CBL-based project, but in a course outside our sample for this study. The interview questions and question ordering are included in Appendix B. The interview prompted recall of the experience, then elicited the beneficial aspects of the course, alignment with and impact on values, challenges of the course, engagement with the course and peers, connections between the respondent’s CBL experience current career/job, and current activities related to issues of social change and social justice.

Interview transcripts were analyzed and coded separately from the open-ended survey data. Team members and two external, independent reviewers analyzed the transcripts through a constant comparative method (Merriam, 2009), reviewing each transcript for relevant segments of text, completing notes on emerging themes, coding the text using open coding with Excel spreadsheets, and grouping the related codes into themes. We then met to discuss findings and generate shared themes across interviews (Kvale, 1996). Team members then discussed the separate analyses, came to consensus on the themes, and compared findings to the quantitative survey data. The two external reviewers’ analyses confirmed the team’s analysis, showing congruence on the themes of both the open-ended survey and interview data.

By building our own study upon these earlier studies, we hoped to extend the understanding of the value and challenges of program and course-based CBL across disciplines. Allowing for potentially interesting comparisons, one of the four programs examined in our study required CBL opportunities that move beyond the course-based model.

Context: Program and Course Descriptions

Our research team elicited data from all students enrolled in one of 18 course sections taught over a span of 5 years across four degree programs: accelerated leadership, interdisciplinary general education, social work, and economics. These programs and course sections were chosen based on programmatic and faculty commitment to evaluate the long-term value of CBL. Three faculty members’ courses were included, one each from economics, interdisciplinary studies, and social work. All were full-time, tenure track faculty with PhDs in their disciplines and had between one to 5 years of experience with CBL pedagogies. Faculty also represented different social identity categories, including one White-identifying woman and two men (one Asian and one White). There were both a range of differences across the courses in the study (course level, year, duration, student population, and learning objectives) and striking similarities in the approaches to CBL (all courses required team- and project-based CBL in which students gathered data and used it to create new knowledge). They all also required students to conduct site visits, complete reflective writing assignments, give presentations, and submit a final project report. The courses also shared a number of learning objectives including having students analyze and apply course content, engage in practice-informed research and research-informed practice, communicate findings, and suggest future actions to community members. Tables 1 and 2 present a comparison of some of these course features, with additional program details in Appendix C.

Analysis and Results

This section presents the findings from the quantitative survey questions, open-ended survey questions, and phone interviews.

Discussion

This study sought to answer three questions. First, what do former undergraduate students perceive as the long-term impact from their CBL courses? Second, in what ways have they found lessons learned or skills developed as a result of their CBL courses to be of value in their civic, personal, professional, and academic lives? Third, what are their suggestions for improving the impact of CBL courses?

As prior studies have also shown (Battistoni & Mitchell, 2018; Carlisle et al., 2017; Raykov & Taylor, 2018; Ryan, 2017), former students valued their CBL experiences. This finding was consistent across academic disciplines, courses, instructors, and project types. They especially appreciated the opportunity to acquire skills and expand their perspectives, finding that this work was valuable to their life and careers post-graduation.

When asked about impacts related to academic growth, participants reported that CBL-based projects better supported their ability to acquire and retain course content compared to traditional classroom experiences. As found in Ibrahim et al. (2016), our respondents indicated that the course content supported and enriched their community engagement experiences and the community experience itself deepened their learning. As in Deeley (2010) and Miller and Gonzalez (2009), our respondents indicated their CBL work increased their understanding of how to affect their community, improved their ability to identify the source of problems, and helped them understand how to create plans to address these problems. In addition, respondents across programs reported learning from community members, site visits, other students in the course, and the instructor.

Our findings affirm and further situate recent research findings on a number of other fronts. Foremost, previous studies’ findings indicating that engaged learning should exist across programs of study as a scaffolded, sustained, and reflexive praxis were reinforced by our findings (Battistoni & Mitchell, 2018; Kecskes, 2015; Saltmarsh et al., 2015). While former students consistently articulated a desire for continuing their work and deepening relationships, they still consistently found value in the course- and semester-based CBL experiences.

Our study also reinforced findings that survey data alone can be misleading. For instance, while both our closed and open-ended survey data indicated former students felt they were more engaged in community issues because of their CBL experiences, interviews revealed a strain between their daily personal and professional commitments and their desire to be engaged in social and civic issues. Interviewees, for instance, indicated that their CBL course motivated a deeper commitment to civic engagement but that they were not acting upon that commitment as much as they had hoped. This finding leads us to further emphasize the value of CBL that prepares students to explore systemic barriers and challenges to engagement as well as a diverse set of engagement strategies. CBL that visualizes systemic barriers and offers an array of strategies for disrupting oppressive systems could better support graduates as they navigate these challenges. CBL curricula could, for instance, visualize and map complex systems and power dynamics, situate the historical and geographic complexities, and require the critical reflection of the ethical and political challenges. Interested readers can explore a range of practices for supporting students, including the Interdependence Toolkit from the Community-Based Global Learning Collaborative, as well as emerging work in critical service learning, subversive service learning, and community-first and community-based participatory research (Campus Contact, n.d.).

While these prior studies emphasized the need for reflective dialogic praxis in long-term valued outcomes, our analysis also indicated that it was the real-world, hands-on, collaborative nature of the CBL experience that created both the greatest challenges and greatest long-term benefits. Respondents consistently placed high value on the skills they acquired through struggling with these real-world challenges together regardless of whether they were resolved successfully at the time. As a member of a team, students were able to negotiate roles in the context of their lives, skill sets, and education. Furthermore, the community-based projects created opportunities for students to be co-generators of initiatives that created positive changes in their communities. These findings support and extend previous research indicating that the collaborative, project-based nature of CBL experiences provide tools for supporting students’ future endeavors (Schnaubelt & Coffey, 2016). Further efforts to examine the role of collaborative, project-based learning via longitudinal, mixed methods studies would be valuable.

Also extending past research findings (Kiely & Sexsmith, 2018), we found that faculty experience teaching with CBL played a significant role in the long-term perceived value of the course. Students who enrolled in a CBL course during the second or subsequent semester that a faculty member employed CBL pedagogy were more likely to perceive positive long-term benefits. This is in line with our experiences, in that engaging students outside the traditional classroom through community collaborations presents several novel challenges for the faculty member. Extra responsibilities may include creating and nurturing mutually reinforcing feedback loops, encouraging experiential learning in situations visible to the broader community, supporting collaboration outside the classroom environment with non-students, and establishing and nurturing their own community connections (Arantes do Amaral, 2019). Our results indicate students perceive that faculty learn to navigate the challenges of CBL pedagogies quickly.

The data also show interesting disciplinary differences in perceived long-term benefits reported by participants that are worth future study. For example, as described above, students in the interdisciplinary and leadership-focused courses were more likely to report improvements in identifying the sources of complex problems and analyzing power dynamics. While we cannot precisely identify the causal factors, the differences in reported outcomes are consistent with the different focus across the courses. For example, the economics course primarily focused on application of professional technical tools for students at the end of their undergraduate college experience, whereas the accelerated leadership courses focused on the ethical complexities of community engagement and the examination of power constructs. This finding aligns with Nelson Laird et al.’s (2008) study on deep learning, which found disciplinary differences emerged between “soft” and “hard” fields (p. 470). Given the student variability across the four disciplines, such as student major and year, faculty expertise, academic discipline, type of CBL project and community partners, and course content and learning objectives, these differences are noteworthy but not surprising.

Indeed, it is perhaps more striking that former students reported (statistically) similar outcomes across so many domains. Indeed, the five questions in Table 3 for which respondents showed no differences across the experiences tells an interesting story taken together. Students from all four CBL courses reported similar rates of agreement in seeing the world in new ways (personal), understanding how to affect their community (civic), identifying the source of the problem (professional), creating a plan to address it (professional), and, ultimately, that they had made a contribution to their community through their CBL experience (civic).

The challenge of providing an adequate amount of time to maximize the learning and community benefit of CBL has long been noted in the service, leadership, and community engagement fields (Mabry, 1998; Wallace, 2000). The academic calendar, structures, and processes often inhibit CBL’s potential for sustained impact, as CBL is often used with an individual course that occurs over a single semester. This challenge was identified by several of our participants, who mentioned that one semester was not enough time to support their projects. Specifically, they requested additional time for providing increased community interaction, nurturing long-term relationships, and grasping the impact of their collaborative work. About two-thirds of our participants reported making an impact on their community through their participation in the CBL course; however, several participants reported struggling to see the impact of their work, and a few others incorrectly assumed their work had little or no community impact. In addition, some interviewees, unsolicited, expressed a desire for opportunities to remain involved with the project beyond the course.

Our results and others in the literature indicate that the impact of CBL cannot be fully assessed by end-of-term evaluations alone or by quantitative survey metrics (Divan et al., 2017). Intentional programmatic efforts designed to provide opportunities (including for-credit coursework) for longer-term CBL projects; better communicate stories from student and community perspectives about the experience, outcomes, and impacts of the partnership; and assess the long-term outputs and impacts of CBL practices would be valuable for students, faculty, academic institutions, and community partners. As described above, these recommendations align with Saltmarsh et al.’s (2015) recommendations for deep, pervasive, and integrated CBL.

Participants also recommended that faculty should tailor the CBL course experience to student background and capacity. Some reported frustration that faculty provided too much or too little guidance in activities such as finding and working with community partners, developing projects viable in the time available, and moderating conflict with team members. Although contextually responsive, scaffolded engagement and targeted student support are important, our results demonstrate that student initiative and agency in overcoming these challenges are related to creating the long-term benefits. Overcoming challenges as a value in hindsight of CBL experiences was a theme that emerged first in the open-ended survey data and came to life through the interviews. The experience of navigating and overcoming challenges, particularly actively engaging with community members and organizations and navigating team dynamics, produced skills that respondents now utilize in their current lives. Reaching out to new people and communities as well as navigating conflict in working with others were often cited as skills that former students draw upon today. It is important to note that this learning was also cited in interviews as uniquely valuable when compared to their experiences in non-CBL courses. The interview data were critical in understanding how and why these challenges were perceived as valuable for former students. In part, this motivates our recommendation that faculty clearly articulate the expectations, goals, and learning opportunities for students.

Given the results of our research, we encourage faculty who are considering integrating a CBL project to seek guidance from experienced CBL students, faculty, and community members; review and integrate recommendations from critical service learning scholars and practitioners; implement longitudinal assessment measures; and communicate the learning curve to the administration and fellow faculty at their institutions. To support student learning, we also recommend faculty pursue opportunities for CBL experiences that span semesters or courses; provide support identifying and contextualizing problems historically and politically in the partner communities; guide students through managing interpersonal conflict; and explicitly identify and link the skills being developed by students to their future personal, professional, and civic endeavors.

Limitations and Opportunities for Future Research

This study examined the post-course impact of CBL by applying a mixed methods approach to generate more robust findings about the long-term impact of the experience on students. There were, however, a number of limitations that impact the external validity of this study. The data were collected from students from a purposeful sample of courses at one institution, without data from a control group. This study also focused on long-term outcomes from the student perspective and thus does not provide a complete picture of the value and limitations of CBL projects from other critical perspectives, especially those of community members and partners (Kepkiewicz et al., 2018). Exploring how these results are affirmed or complicated from the faculty and community partner perspectives is a critical next step.[11] Comparing former students’ perceptions of CBL course impact with those of the community and instructors would be a logical extension of this research. In general, more research studies designed to assess the long-term impact of this work from all stakeholders’ perspectives would provide evidence for course and project designs that yield more educational, inclusive, and socially just impact.

In addition to exploring the emergence of recent tools designed to provide easy-to-use, quick, valid, and reliable feedback on CBL experiences (Miller et al., 2018), future research should continue to apply and refine the survey, interview, and methodological tools used here, to continually improve capturing and communicating the impact of CBL projects and courses.

Attempts to replicate findings across disciplines, faculty experience levels, institutions, and with different types of students would also be valuable for supporting longitudinal assessment that informs and reforms effective CBL curricular practices. For example, our data show significant differences in student outcomes based on how new faculty members were to implementing project-based CBL, and we compared those outcomes for that same faculty member after they had gained experience. These practices were not widespread at the institution, and our participants were drawn from the sections of these few faculty. With the passing of time, this study can be repeated to examine long-term impacts from more practices, disciplines, faculty, and faculty experience levels. The changing student outcomes based on faculty experience with CBL clarify the need for tracking and analysis of institutional changes around the personnel and curriculum policies that will either support or hinder the future of CBL in higher education.

Conclusion

This study contributes to the CBL literature by using a mixed methods approach to better understand the challenges and the value of CBL for personal, professional, and civic life post-graduation. Our findings both align with and further complicate prior research. Our data demonstrate that former students believed their CBL experiences improved their learning; cultivated a sense of social responsibility and civic-mindedness; and built skills needed for their post-course civic, professional, and personal lives that were sustained for years after the experience. Similar rates of agreement were found in respondents across courses, who said that CBL helped them see the world in new ways, understand how to affect their community, identify the source of a problem, and create a plan to address those problems and that they had made a contribution to their community through their CBL experience. The data also revealed a few significant differences in reported student outcomes across disciplines and projects. Respondents from interdisciplinary and leadership-focused fields felt more confident they could identify the sources of complex problems and analyze power dynamics than did students from other types of programs.

Particularly noteworthy, our study substantiates recent findings that long-term transformational growth in CBL knowledge, values, and skills does not easily transfer into formal engagements within civic and social spheres. Respondents indicated that their desire to engage the civic sphere was hampered by the daily and weekly commitments of their professional and personal lives. These findings lead us to suggest CBL practitioners from all fields provide opportunities for students to examine the systemic and procedural challenges they are likely to confront post-graduation and explore an array of actionable strategies for engaging across social and civic spheres.

In contrast to earlier studies, our study more closely examined the long-term effects of the collaborative and project-based nature of CBL experiences. In particular, our research highlights a link between the real-world challenges of project-based CBL, the relational nature of the approach, and its long-term impact. Respondents emphasized that it was the challenge of navigating the uncertainties of collaborative, real-world projects that produced shifts in their mindsets and fostered skills valuable to them today.

Participants provided recommendations for improving CBL experiences, and we articulated several recommendations for educators and avenues for future research, such as the need for diverse development opportunities that include community, student, and interdisciplinary guidance and programmatic assessment efforts designed to capture the value and the limitations of CBL from student and community perspectives. Creating mutually beneficial CBL projects requires a nuanced understanding of a host of interconnecting social and institutional factors that exist far outside of disciplinary expertise.

This study corroborates and builds upon prior research by confirming the value, challenges, and potential limitations of CBL as a pedagogical practice that can foster the knowledge, skills, and dispositions needed to address pressing civic, professional, and personal challenges for communities in the 21st century. Leaders in the field believe the rationale for CBL lies not just in its potential to support deep learning and improve student engagement but in its ability to foster a sense of social responsibility and civic-mindedness (Battistoni et al., 2009; Hatcher et al., 2017). We see an opportunity for CBL to not only foster professional development and civic-mindedness but also more intentionally build the capacities and skill sets of graduates to act in ways that disrupt oppressive structures and create more inclusive and equitable civic processes.

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Author Biographies

Danielle Lake is the Director of Design Thinking and Associate Professor at Elon University. Her scholarship explores the connections and tensions between wicked problems and the movement toward public engagement within higher education. Recent publications can be found at http://works.bepress.com/danielle_lake/.

Aaron Lowen is a Full Professor of Economics at Grand Valley State University. His other current research includes estimating the effects of Title IX legislation on women’s health outcomes and using data from natural experiments to estimate the gender wage gap. He primarily teaches in the areas of game theory, business and data analytics, and organizational strategy.

Kristin Moretto has an extensive background in community engagement and over 15 years of experience in higher education and nonprofit leadership. She has led community-based and experiential learning programs and initiatives at Grand Valley State University, the University of South Florida, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and Michigan State University. Kristin earned a BA in Organizational Studies from the University of Michigan and an MA in Student Affairs Administration and a PhD in Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education (HALE), both from Michigan State University.

Brandon W. Youker is an Associate Professor of Social Work at Grand Valley State University and an independent evaluation consultant. In addition to researching community-based learning, his work focuses on goal-free evaluation and its utility. Dr. Youker primarily teaches courses on social research methods and program evaluation.

Appendix A

Appendix B

Appendix C

Notes

1. For additional evidence the reader can also review Astin et al. (2006), Celio et al. (2011), Eyler et al. (2001), and Novak et al. (2007).

2. While Carlisle et al. (2017) have identified trends over time in outcomes using the Community-Based Learning Impact Scale, they did not intentionally attempt to assess the persistence of outcomes over time.

3. Their surveys were created by integrating findings from previous research on SLCE (Hatcher, 2008) with questions that emerged from an initial analysis of their interviews. The survey integrated items from the Civic Minded Professional scale with questions that focused on how alumni have integrated CBL practices into their work and larger life (Mitchell et al., 2015).

4. The four questions used directly were “This course challenged me to examine the strengths and weaknesses of my own views on a topic or issue,” “This course encouraged me to use my personal experiences to understand concepts and facts,” “This class encouraged me to interact with people from different backgrounds and cultures,” and “This class included perspectives of peoples from different backgrounds and cultures.” Adapted questions included “This course encouraged me to use concepts and facts that I learned in the course by applying them to new situations,” “The community work I did in this course helped me to gain a better understanding of course concepts and theories,” and “The assignments and/or activities in this course have helped me to form friendships with others in the course.”

5. Given feedback from the focus group and the central aims of our study, we chose to reduce the time needed to complete the survey by removing the psychological and social well-being and civic activities sections.

6. Human subjects review approval was granted in the summer of 2018. The survey was available to respondents in September and October 2018. During the survey, respondents were able to volunteer for interviews, with interviews immediately following, starting in November 2018. Analysis of the data followed into 2019.

7. The host institution emailed two invitations to the targeted participants in adherence with internal rules regarding privacy of academic records. No other recruiting of participants was permitted.

8. Over this period 49.8% of university faculty identified as female and 50.2% as male. About 82.3% of university faculty identified as White, 3.7% African American or Black, 3.2% Hispanic or Latino, 7.8% Asian or Pacific Islander, and 3.0% another affiliation.

9. Quantitative analysis was primarily done in Stata (StataCorp, 2017).

10. While formal interviews with community partners were not a part of this study, some partners were interviewed as a part of an earlier study. This finding was also corroborated via anecdotal evidence of positive organizational and community changes resulting from the faculty overseeing these projects.

11. The authors thank an anonymous referee for this recommendation.