Critical Thinking, Service-Learning and General Education Competencies at Mount Wachusett Community College.

Introduction

Mount Wachusett Community College's (MWCC)journey into Service-Learning began in 1995 as our President, Dr. Daniel Asquino, was meeting with other college and university leaders to define a new vision for their campuses, where academic skills and community service become entwined. He returned to the "Mount" convinced that Service-Learning was essential in meeting the College's mission. He believed that Mount Wachusett Community College could become a leader in the process of building citizenship and character, providing new opportunities in learning, cultural awareness, wellness and economic enhancement while serving as an important community resource. Plans were set into action, and in the Fall of 1997 MWCC received our first Massachusetts Campus Compact (MACC) Learn & Serve Higher Education Service-Learning Grant. We began instituting a 3-year plan for institutionalizing Service-Learning into all academic divisions, encouraging participation in Service-Learning related professional development opportunities, and expanding Service-Learning.

A Team Approach

The success of the "Mount's" Service-Learning program is a direct result of team work and strong support from Academic Deans and College Administration. Susan McAlpine, Director of Cooperative Education and Service-Learning works closely with faculty and deans to establish a well defined, team-oriented Service-Learning program reflecting the needs of the "Mount's" students, faculty, and community partners. Team members explore ways to create Service-Learning experiences that meet course objectives, build critical thinking skills, and make progress toward achievement of MWCC's six General Education competencies.

Our Service-Learning team has been proactive in rethinking how student abilities are measured and defining what competencies students should gain from their collegiate experience. Critical thinking, defined by Robert Ennis as "reasonable, reflective thinking that is focused on what to believe or do,"(1) is at the core of the General Education competencies they identified for MWCC. Everyday, students face choices or problems. They must identify and assess arguments--whatever the form, assess reliability of information, order or classify information or ideas, explore causal claims, and make comparisons. They must understand inductive and deductive reasoning; determine the usefulness of ideas, generalizations, and factual claims; make assumptions; understand implications; and recognize logical fallacies. Course objectives may vary from discipline to discipline, but critical thinking skills are consistently required to meet all academic objectives.

The MWCC Service-Learning Team identified Service-Learning as an ideal teaching approach for several reasons. First, Service-Learning is useful as a tool to help students reinforce classroom theory in real-life situations. Placement in Service Agencies across the region provides students with valuable opportunities to reinforce career decisions and generate contacts within their future profession. As understanding of learning styles increases, Service-Learning provides faculty with an excellent tool for students with a preference for experiential learning. Thus, Service-Learning becomes an opportunity for faculty to implement new teaching approaches into their courses meeting the learning needs of a wide variety of students. Furthermore, Service-Learning provides an opportunity for students to develop self-esteem, a sense of community, and civic responsibility.

Psychology Instructor Sheila Murphy was one of our first faculty members to integrate Service-Learning components into her Abnormal Psychology, Counseling Methods and Interviewing Techniques courses. She has long believed in the philosophy behind the Native American proverb, "Tell me. I'll listen. Show me. I'll believe. Involve me. I'll learn," and works daily to help her students apply classroom knowledge to the world around them. Service-Learning helped her to reach that objective and helps her students foster a sense of social responsibility and awareness of community needs. Service-Learning helps keep the "community" in community college.

Murphy's Service-Learning components are designed to facilitate student achievement in both General Education and Social Science course competencies. It is easy to identify how Service-Learning helps Murphy's students achieve competencies in developing or further developing citizenship skills, including building a sense of social responsibility and awareness of the needs of the community. Murphy designs opportunities for her students to help them achieve other course competencies, including an opportunity to develop an understanding of the needs of clients who receive mental health and/or supportive services, and to be able, through service, to learn to recognize and respond to those needs. Her students make valuable connections between classroom learning and real life situations in their communities and gain hands-on experience working with special populations. Murphy feels these experiences lead students to an understanding of the ethical guidelines of the counseling field.

As one of Murphy's students wrote:

   I was able to apply the information being taught in Abnormal Psychology to
   the consumers who attended the day treatment program. It is far different
   to look at the criteria listed in a book than it is to observe the consumer
   exhibiting the symptoms. I was able to think with a critical eye about
   diagnosis, labeling and various treatment modalities. I became aware of the
   many difficulties that the consumers must cope with as a direct or indirect
   result of their mental illness.(2)

In short, Murphy's students confirm that integrating Service-Learning into her curriculum helps students open the door to their community, to their futures, and provides them with tools to establish competence in all of the College's General Education competencies.

Service-Learning, Critical Thinking and General Education Competencies

Faculty believe that Service-Learning helps students achieve General Education competencies via experiential learning, develop critical thinking skills, and meet course objectives (see Figure 1). Critical thinking skills are essential in meeting the 6 General Education competencies MWCC has established for students:

Written/oral communication in English

?? Problem solving, scientific inquiry, quantitative reasoning, and critical thinking

?? Understand historic and social processes

?? Use modern technology to access, evaluate, apply information

?? Assess aesthetic and ethical standards in diverse local and global environments

?? Career Planning, Health Management and life-long learning.

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MWCC provides a number of ways for students to achieve these competencies: they can enroll in particular courses and participate in Cooperative Education, internships, practicums, student government, organizations, clubs, specialized programs, and Service-Learning.

What is Service-Learning at MWCC?

Service-Learning is a teaching method that includes community service as a dynamic and interrelated part of the learning experience. At the "Mount," Service-Learning is a voluntary opportunity for faculty and students. Each Service-Learning experience is tied to course objectives and provides students with tools to achieve at least one of the College's General Education competencies.

Faculty have found that the unique synthesizing nature of Service-Learning facilitates student progress toward achievement of General Education competencies, course objectives, and critical thinking skills. This is evident in the following examples of how Faculty integrated Service-Learning into a variety of courses, building critical thinking skills and taking steps towards building MWCC General Education competencies.

Associate Professor Lorie Donahue uses her Tutoring K-6 (Reading and Writing) Service-Learning option as a means of reinforcing the following course objectives:

?? English 101: clarifying ideas through the process of revision and rewriting; understanding grammar and mechanics

?? English 102: expressing reactions to Literature; understanding insight into the Human condition

?? Children's Literature 235: identifying artistic, cultural and moral values in children's literature

Service-Learning furthers Donahue's course objectives while providing students an opportunity to exercise several critical thinking skills in observing and assessing information; questioning ideas and behaviors; inferring; using comparative, causal, process analysis, problem solving and metacognitional thinking.

There are other surprising results! MWCC faculty have found that Service-Learning fulfills General Education Competencies in ways not anticipated. For example, one of Donahue's student completing a Service-Learning experience in Children's Literature discovered ethical standards related to her participation (CORI checks and confidentiality issues). While successfully completing her commitment, this student progressed towards MWCC's competency in assessing aesthetic and ethical standards while fulfilling Donahue's objectives for Children's Literature noted above.

English Instructor Ann Pfennighaus is a strong believer in the value of service for her English Composition students. She knows "Education is a social process. Education is growth. Education is not a preparation for life; education is life itself, and that things gain meaning by being used in a shared experience or joint action."(3)

Pfennighaus presents a Service-Learning tutoring option to her students as a metaphor for writing a good essay. In committing to serve, students use their decision-making skills. The act of volunteering is similar to deciding to complete a writing assignment. In acting on their commitment, students begin solving problems. Contacting the Service-Learning site is analogous to putting pen to paper and brainstorming bravely. Her students set goals in conjunction with Pfennighaus and their site supervisors. This helps students build their capacity to brainstorm and rank ideas. Deciding on what they hope to accomplish is similar to composing a working thesis. While planning their experience, they begin to order and classify information. Students then write an outline with a beginning, middle, and end. By trying out their ideas in action, students use creative thinking skills.

While tutoring, in a sense they begin composing a first draft of their experience. As with many writing experiences, Pfennighaus' students find that their draft requires revision. Student tutors realize they must re-evaluate goals, ask questions to clarify ideas and information. The tutoring experience reinforces their ability to ask for and accept advice, similar to when they are proofreading, editing, and revising a good composition. Reflecting on their experience, actions, and decisions, and sharing their thoughts in class builds observation and assessment skills.

Pfennighaus finds bringing closure to a Service-Learning experience is often difficult for students, as it is when writing the conclusion for an essay. She encourages them to spend time planning their departure. This is their opportunity to compose their "Ta-Da, here's what I did" draft. In doing so, students produce their self-corrected, real-life essays.

Assistant Professor, Dr. Maryann Kane has found that Service-Learning experiences increase her student's empathy for, and understanding of, Children With Special Needs, skills for working with children with special needs and an understanding of educational programs in the community for children with special needs.

In order to succeed in meeting these objectives Kane's students develop critical thinking skills in observing and assessing observations, comparing and contrasting analogies, asking questions to clarify ideas, and using creative thinking.

Their journals, questions, and classroom discussion indicate that Kane's students are building strengths in all 6 MWCC General Education competencies while developing other competencies directly related to Children with Special Needs: understanding disabilities, learning how to provide a supportive learning environment, and developing techniques to support all children's development.

Faculty in our Nursing department include Service-Learning options in their program to reinforce critical thinking skills and General Education competencies while helping students gain hands-on experience in the field. Objectives for Service-Learning experiences in Professor Jane Doyle's Nursing Techniques include applying critical thinking skills in the preparation and delivery of a presentation to nurses' aides. In developing presentations for Nurses' aides, Doyle's students identify many issues. Students resolve these issues using critical thinking skills: they identify and assess the reliability of sources, identify and assess the usefulness of information, ask questions to clarify ideas or information, order/classify information, and make decisions based on current medical protocol.

Professor of Nursing, Margaret Hennessy and Assistant Professor, Carol Bosworth developed a unique team approach towards Service-Learning. Their first step was to identify the subtle difference between community service associated with clinical practice and that associated with Service-Learning. Together, they searched for ways to help students develop awareness of the community as a setting for nursing practice while incorporating Service-Learning experiences. Their Psychology of Mental Health course focuses on basic concepts of mental health and illness emphasizing the therapeutic relationship. Bosworth and Hennessy's Service-Learning experiences helped students develop communication skills, community assessment skills, awareness of common health problems of the indigent, and community services available to them. These Service-Learning experiences were so rewarding that their students recommended them as mandatory course components.

MWCC nursing students participating in Service-Learning build related competencies by improving their oral and written communication, understanding of medical conditions, prescribed treatments and processes, assessing aesthetic and ethical standards, and problem solving skills.

MWCC faculty have incorporated Service-Learning experiences into science courses including Human Biology, Environmental Issues, and Plant Science. Students are encouraged to develop Service-Learning experiences based on their own interests, and faculty facilitate their placement in appropriate sites. MWCC students recently developed an Environmental Education Center. While doing so, they applied critical thinking skills when researching environmental and wildlife issues. They identified and assessed the reliability of sources, assessed the usefulness of information, asked questions to clarify ideas and information. They also made progress toward achievement of General Education competencies in oral and written communication, problem solving, ordering and classifying information, competence in life-long learning. All of these skills were essential in helping them prepare educational materials appropriate for elementary school children.

Where do Learning Styles and Adult Education philosophy come into play?

Service-Learning is an excellent technique to help students with varied Learning Styles achieve General Education and course competencies, bridging classroom theory with real life experience. Raymond Wlodkowski,(4) an educational psychologist who specializes in adult education, has published strategies for motivating learning in adults. Many of these strategies are essential components of successful Service-Learning projects. Wlodowski suggests faculty "help learners attribute their success to their ability and effort,"(5) "allow learners to share and publicly display their projects and skills,"(6) "provide learners with the opportunity to select topics, projects and assignments that appeal to their curiosity, sense of wonder and need to explore,"(7) and "help learners directly experience cognitive concepts on a physical and emotional level."(8) By offering Service-Learning, MWCC faculty provide opportunities for active learning experiences via adult educational strategies.

What are Learning Styles?

As James Keefe (1979) notes, "learning styles are characteristic behaviors that serve as indicators of how learners, perceive, interact with, and respond to the learning environment."(9)

Why are learning styles important in our classrooms? Sandra Reif,(10) conducted a study in 1993 and found that students remember: 10% of what they read, 20% of what they hear, 30% of what they see, 50% of what they see and hear, 70% of what they say, and 90% of what they say and do. Contrast these facts with classroom reality where most college professors are verbal learners and find it easiest to teach in that style!

Terry O'Connor(11) of Indiana State University writes that one fundamental of 20th Century psychology is that people rely on personal filters to orient their relationship to the world. These filters respond to a variety of factors including age, experience, maturity, cognition, physiology, and biochemistry.

Learning style researchers have identified clusters of individuals who perceive and interpret information in similar patterns referred to as Learning Styles (see Figure 2).

[Figure 2 ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Learning Styles

* Visual ??: learn by seeing, watching, demonstrations, reading

* Auditory [Epsilon]: learn by hearing and listening, prefer to listen to lectures and tapes

* Bodily kinesthetic [Mu]: hands on learners, learning is assisted by manipulation

* Lectures are most appropriate for Auditory and Verbal learners

* Volunteering is most appropriate for Group and Kinesthetic learners

Since we cannot switch endlessly between all of these filters, individuals develop a unique approach to perceive, understand, and plan his or her interactions. Our personal way of selecting information can be described as our learning style. As educators it is important to remember that Learning styles are preferences and that experience in other forms of learning can change and/or expand preferences. By teaming individual learners (who prefer to work alone, are confident with their own thoughts, and understanding) with group learners (who prefer to work/study with at least one other person, think better and remember more in group interaction) in properly designed Service-Learning experiences, faculty can increase the learning of each group.

Learning Style Research has identified a variety of models used to characterize learning styles: Instructional and Environmental Preferences, Social Interaction Models, Information Processing Models, Personality Models. One learning theory that compliments Service-Learning is Kolb's 1984 Effective Learning Cycle (see Figure 3).(12)

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Kolb's work suggests that complete learning requires four elements:

1. concrete experience and observation,

2. considered reflection on that experience,

3. synthesis and abstract conceptualization,

4. testing of the new concepts in new situations

Service-Learning provides concrete experience, reflection, synthesis, and opportunities to test new concepts. By introducing Service-Learning and assisting students in reflecting on their experience, faculty motivate students in working through all four elements and establishing a pattern of "metacognition," or thinking about their thinking. Incorporating a variety of techniques and strategies into the classroom effectively creates opportunities for students to use their various strengths in learning while reinforcing course material.

Conclusion

In closing, we believe the best Service-Learning experiences creatively allow students to bridge classroom and the community in a way that is personally meaningful. In the process they develop a greater understanding of course material through experiential education, build critical thinking skills, and gain General Education competencies. Faculty provide information in ways that meet students' diverse learning styles and utilize adult educational strategies. If you have any questions about this material or our Service-Learning program, please contact us at the following addresses:

Name                        E-mail                    Phone

Lorie Donahue     <[e-mail]>    978-632-6600, x 349.
Maryann Kane      <[e-mail]>       978-632-6600, x 217.
Ann Pfennighaus   <[e-mail]>           978-632-6600, x 168.
Susan McAlpine    <[e-mail]>   978-632-6600, x 219.
Sheila Murphy     <[e-mail]>     978-632-6600, x 331.

Endnotes

(1). Ennis, Robert H. (1986). A Taxonomy of Critical Thinking Dispositions and Abilities. Illinois Critical Thinking Project: University of Illinois.

(2.) Elliott, Victoria. (1997). Abnormal Psychology, Service Learning Journal Entry.

(3.) Dewey, John. (1916). Democracy and Education. New York: The Free Press.

(4.) Wlodkowski, Raymond J. (1988). Enhancing Adult Motivation To Learn. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.

(5.) Ibid., Strategy #13, page 95.

(6.) Ibid., Strategy #32, page 129.

(7.) Ibid., Strategy #33, page 131.

(8.) Ibid., Strategy #57, page 195.

(9.) Keefe, James W. (1979) <http://members.aol.com/emaran/main.htm>.

(10.) Reif, Sandra F. (1993). How To Reach and Teach ADD/AHDH Children: Practical Techniques, Strategies, and Interventions for Helping Children with Attention Problems and Hyperactivity. The Center for Applied Research in Education p.53 Also found at <http://www.scican.net/~harnish/mstyles.html>.

(11.) Using Learning Styles to Adapt Technology for Higher Education, Terry O'Connor, CTL Learning Styles Site, <http://web.isu.indstate.edu/ctl/styles/learning.html>.

(12.) Kolb, D.A. (1984). Experiential Learning. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.

Susan Staniewicz McAlpine (M. Ed.) is the Director of Cooperative Education and Service-Learning. Lorie Donahue (M.A.) is a Professor of English. Dr. Maryann Kane is Assistant Professor of Early Childhood Studies. Sheila Murphy (M.A.) is Assistant Professor of Psychology, and Ann Pfennighaus (M.A.) is English faculty. This team has worked together and with others to plan and implement Mount Wachusett Community College's highly successful Service-Learning Program.