A qualitative investigation of a first-year engineering service-learning program

Abstract

Service learning is a pedagogy that integrates community service into the academic experience. Studies have shown that service learning can positively impact student learning, provides a rich environment for students to learn the professional skills that are often difficult to teach in traditional classes, can increase retention in participants, and can broaden the view of engineering among the participants. Service-learning can greatly enhance the services of local community service organizations that lack the technical staffs and/or resources to take full advantage of current technology. The potential benefits of service learning have motivated the Department of Engineering Education at Purdue to begin implementing service learning into the first-year engineering courses. 143 students participated in a service-learning experience at Purdue University in the Fall semester of 2003. Student and community partner evaluations have shown initial success A detailed qualitative investigation has been conducted to fully understand the impact of the experience on the student participants. Specifically, one hour interviews were conducted with 20 first-year students, 10 male, 10 female and five underrepresented students. This paper will report on the findings from the study using narrative vignettes.