2016 Annual Conference

The purpose of this paper is to study how to conduct service learning by collaborating with the community partners, through which the author aims to identify the strategies of how to conduct service learning in the community and the challenges in conducting service learning.

Researchers, graduate students, and practitioners who are interested in the topic on how to organize adult learning activities in the community context by partnering with community organizations.

In this paper, the author described a practical case of a service learning course conducted in the fall of 2015. In this course, 12 graduate students worked with community partners to market and organize reading workshops for the local citizens. Students used different organizational/management theories to identify and analyze the organizations which could support reading workshops in the local community, designed, marketed and organized reading workshops in the local community, and developed relevant budget plans for their service learning projects.

Students were evaluated based on the overall quality of their projects. The evaluation was based on assessment of the plans they made which reflected the theories they learned in this course; the results of the actions they took to implement the plans; their sharing and commenting on each other’s work; and the quality of their group collaboration. Students conducted very rich workshops and achieved the required learning goals. However, some students were not satisfied with this service learning course due to the large amount of time they invested in the course, the difficulties they encountered in finding partners, and the plans they had to adjust due to the changed situations.