The impacts of service learning on students and community members: Lessons from design projects for older adults

Abstract

Engineering for Humanity, an interdisciplinary engineering design and anthropology course at Olin College of Engineering, is a semester-long service-learning partnership between the college and nearby Councils on Aging. This paper examines the effects of this service learning on our students and their partners. Our research suggests that this experience has positively impacted students' and elder partners' behavior and attitudes. We collected data from student and partner surveys, from interviews with the community partners, and from student reflections. By comparing student behavior and attitudes before and after this course, we have observed the following behavioral and attitudinal changes: 1) development of empathetic knowledge and understanding, 2) increased appreciation for user-centered design, 3) redefinition of career trajectories. We also saw transformations in the lives of the community partners. Outcomes for elders were related to quality of life and wellbeing, including 1) decreases in isolation, 2) increased purpose and meaning, and 3) improved feelings of wellbeing. Lasting effects included continuation of decreased isolation through a sustained increase in social engagement, as well as positive thoughts about and mechanisms for aging in place. This paper briefly describes the curriculum and reports on these trends over three years of coursework.

Learning with Older Adults through Intergenerational Service Learning in Physical Education Teacher Education

“…Moreover, we also found coincidences in relation to the change in attitudes about oneself [58], and about increasing self-confidence through SL [59,60]. Concerning the 'satisfaction and desire of continuity' of older adults, previous research is consistent with our results [31][32][33][34]. In fact, this is one of the most common results in published studies on intergenerational SL programs [28].…”

“…In this case, the reflection processes implemented might have played a crucial role, as suggested in previous research [45]. On the other hand, regarding the 'social interaction' category emerged from older adults' interviews, it is important to note that the beneficial outcomes are based on the positive engagement created from the interaction between older adults and PETEs [32]. In the same line, Zucchero [8], in the analysis of a similar intergenerational SL experience, reported an improvement in mutual relationship formation and positive experiences in the group of older adults.…”

“…On the one hand, some studies reported positive results in learning outcomes related to the students' personal perceptions, as well as the acquisition of professional skills [27], the knowledge of the consequences of aging among older adults [29], and the perceptions of professional cooperation [30]. On the other hand, outcomes focused on older adults are less studied and mainly address their general perceptions and satisfaction [31][32][33][34]. These results suggest that SL may be an optimal way to promote intergenerational social cohesion and promote older adults' health care [35,36].…”

The Development and Growth of Empathy Among Engineering Students

“…Likewise, in a course titled "Engineering for Humanity," where students observed and interacted with elderly community partners, Lynch and colleagues 53 found that students who initially lacked empathy for their elderly project partners had a transformed understanding of this user group by the end of the course. Most notably, students had two key shifts in their empathic understanding of this user group.…”

The Development of Empathic Perspective‐Taking in an Engineering Ethics Course

“…More recently, there has been a much more concerted focus on empathy as a potential concept, disposition, or skill that should be integrated into engineering (Fila, Hess, Purzer, & Dringenberg, 2016;Gray, Yilmaz, Daly, Seifert, & Gonzalez, 2015;Hess, Strobel, Pan, & Wachter Morris, 2017;Hess, Strobel, & Pan, 2016;Rasoal, Danielsson, & Jungert, 2012;Walther et al, 2017). Researchers have begun exploring empathy's functional role (e.g., the affective and cognitive processes of or relations between stakeholders) within multiple engineering educational contexts, including design Gray et al, 2015), service-learning (Lynch et al, 2014;Zoltowski, Oakes, & Cardella, 2012), communication (Leydens & Lucena, 2009;Walther, Miller, & Kellam, 2012), and ethics (Hess, Beever, et al, 2017;Vallero, 2008;Walther et al, 2017).…”