Resources: Teaching Distance Community Engaged Scholarship Courses

[Updated March 29, 2020]

We will continue to update this post with additional resources. If you have assignment alternatives or approaches, tips on facilitating reflection conversations through distance learning, or plans for continuing to support your community partner remotely, please share them (wagnerw@gwu.edu) and they will be added to these resource lists.

While we all recognize it is much better to have time for proper distance-learning course design, teaching a community engaged scholarship course from a distance CAN be done. Recognizing that some of our community partner organizations will be closing or restricting voluntary service in order to practice physical distancing, we recommend providing 1-2 alternative assignments for students who will still have service requirements to fulfill for your course.

Students' Current Service Status

Remember to use GWServes to determine

Sample Optional Assignments

In ideal cases, where faculty have good personal relationships with the leaders of the community organizations students work with, have a conversation about what students might do remotely that would help the organization or their clients. Keep in mind that staff of these organizations are likely working through their own struggles with ambiguity right now, and may not be able to accommodate you. Please be flexible and adapt to what they need, including if that means suspending student involvement for the time being.
If there is research or other academic work tied to your course learning objectives that could benefit the community partner or the local community in general, provide this as an optional assignment. For example, students could create annotated bibliographies, toolkits, or sample curricula on topics that would be useful to your community partners. Students could also analyze current social policies that affect your community partner, and write summary reports or advocacy letters.
Increasing the challenge and weight of the students’ reflection assignment is another assignment alternative. You might increase the expectations on length of these assignments as well as the depth of personal reflection and analysis of assumptions. Students may also be required to do more research into the social issue, community partner, or understanding of the local community (e.g. local history, demographics, and detailed information about local governance and the process of influencing policy change).
Given the unusual circumstances of this semester, another assignment alternative is for students to do research on the social issue and/or on the Washington, DC community itself, in order to create a document or multi-media presentation to better prepare future students of your course to serve responsibly. Challenge students to explore more deeply the nature of the service issue in a particular community. What is the relevant history with respect to root causes? How has the issue uniquely affected this community? What institutions and civic organizations have been assets through the years and what have they already done to address the issue? What national and local policies are supporting or challenging current efforts?
Assign a reflection assignment on the impact of the coronavirus on our community partners and/or vulnerable populations. What is the role of the active citizen in times of emergency? Consider posing quotations for student response. For example, “this tiny little virus is an immediate reminder that not only are we deeply connected to each other, but also that we are only as strong as the most vulnerable among us.” - Professor Sandra Bass at UC Berkeley.

Courses with Indirect Service

Students who are doing primarily indirect service may be able to continue their projects without interruption. It is important for these students to communicate with their community partners about any shifts in their needs that could make service projects more beneficial. Even with projects that can move forward with minimal changes, students may have anticipated opportunities to continue in-person communicating, planning, and getting feedback from their community partners. Be sure students are aware that everyone in the GW community has free access (single-sign on) to a personal WebEx account to facilitate virtual meetings among community partners and student teams. https://it.gwu.edu/webex-students

Nashman Center Support

We are happy to providing individual coaching or facilitate a WebEx training on any of these topics. Please write to indicate your interest (wagnerw@gwu.edu).

External Resource Links

Westover Webinar. Dr. Jonathan Westover recently offered a webinar on offering service-learning projects in an online class. The recording of that webinar is available here: https://youtu.be/6IOJqutSedw

Ganz Webinar. Dr. Marshall Ganz is a Senior Lecturer in Leadership, Organizing, and Civil Society at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. This webinar, first presented March 13^th, 2020, and features advice from Ganz and his colleagues on teaching online courses. https://youtu.be/9sCIy3KPq-o Thanks to Bobby Hacket of the Bonner Foundation for sharing this resource.

Davidson and Katopodis', "Transforming Your Online Teaching From Crisis to Community" This recent post from Inside Higher Ed will help you get started with the right mindset.

GW’s General Supports for Transitioning to Online Instruction

The GW Instructional Technology Lab has announced a series of webinars to assist instructors. Thanks to Kimberly Gross, Vice Dean for Programs and Operations for circulating this information.

Tuesday, March 17th from 10:30am - 12pm
Thursday, March 19 1:30 - 3:00pm

In addition, the ITL has a number of other faculty workshops that are scheduled in the coming weeks (e.g. Getting Started with Blackboard, Getting Started with VoiceThread, Blackboard Assignments and Tests, Creating Online Lectures and Live Virtual Classroom) Find more information and register.

GW Resources Related to COVID-19