Checklist

How Can I Design a CE Course at a Distance?

• Identify Course Learning Objectives

• List some major questions, problems, or concepts that the course addresses and consider how this course raises issues about the community

• Develop what outcomes you want your students to achieve and what skills and competencies their projects should demonstrate: Service Learning Agreement

• Provide tools for students to develop a list of possible action projects, or to propose a project to you or a community partner

• Provide resources to help students identify potential partners who might benefit from the goals of your course or who might be related to the discipline

• Consider how to incentivize and evaluate (grade) assessments

• Plan how students will evaluate substantive community need and ensure that the community partner’s voice is heard in the development of a student-driven or faculty-created project

• Provide all the project organizational details upfront, in the syllabus and course site so students can plan: Planning Your Action Component

• Define the reflection activities upfront so students can incorporate reflection across the scope of the project

Who Can Help?

• Review the University of Southern Maine and University College Collaborative Civic Engagement Toolkit for resources, templates, guides, and instruction for implementing your course at a distance

• Consider working with an instructional or learning designer and a technology integrator through your campus

• Check with your dean or department chair about service learning, community or civic engagement, or other campus resources that may be able to help match you with a partner

• Work with information technology services and accessibility coordinators to ensure your students, course materials, technology, and partner connection meet with social media and accessibility policies

• Reach out to the Campus Compact, a national organization with local state chapters that has a mission to promote civic engagement and service learning across disciplines and modalities

How Can I Promote Student Connection to the Community?

• Design interaction and encourage that interaction with clear expectations

• Identify tools that both the partner and students can use together. Does the partner have an intranet? Do they have a private social media group that students could join?

• Refer students to campus offices of civic engagement or service learning to seek out partners, or connect them with University College Center Directors to match them with potential partners

• Identify a shortlist of possible projects related to your learning outcomes, achievable in most communities, to provide to students as suggestions [1]

• Refer students to:

• • https://www.volunteer.gov/  

  • http://volunteermaine.org/

  • https://www.unitedway.org/get-involved/volunteer/

What Limitations Should I Consider?

Please observe the following limitations adapted from the Corporation for National & Community Service: the project cannot include the following activities:

• Organizing or engaging in protests, petitions, boycotts, or strikes

• Assisting, promoting, or deterring union organizing

• Impairing existing contracts for services or collective Engaging in religious instruction; conducting worship services; providing instruction as part of a program that includes mandatory religious instruction or worship; constructing or operating facilities devoted to religious instruction or worship; maintaining facilities primarily or inherently devoted to religious instruction or worship; or engaging in any form of religious proselytization.

• Providing a direct benefit to a labor union

Activities for which a student is paid or earning a wage or stipend should be carefully considered and reviewed

How Might I Assess and Evaluate Projects?

• Think about the ways you see that the project has contributed to the course and the community

• Provide space for the Community Partner to weigh in both with your student and class, as well as privately with you so that the partner has a private or anonymous space to voice concerns and suggested changes