Measures of Service Learning

Bowdoin is committed to encouraging and enhancing learning by providing partnerships in which students work within the community. Service learning is a way to integrate classroom learning and community service. Professors and community organizations, known as community partners, collaborate in order to provide situations and projects that benefit the community partner and enhance student involvement in the learning process. Bowdoin's research on service learning is focused on understanding students' perception of their ability to apply the knowledge they learn in class to a real community need or problem. The purpose of this study is to understand the context in which this learning takes place and what facilitates its success in courses.

The Bowdoin Community Service Resource Center is coordinating a study of service-learning courses offered in Fall 2004 to better understand the value of the service-learning component. Surveys of students, faculty and community partners will provide information on the effect of service-learning courses on students’ learning and interest in civic engagement as well as the benefits of service-learning projects to community organizations. The study will also help to determine how better to assist faculty in implementing service learning in the classroom.

Relevant Surveys


1. Service-Learning Questionnaire - Bowdoin Student Form

Conducted at the end of each semester, the questionnaire asks students how many hours per week they spent on the service-learning project and how their participation in the project affected their learning.

Survey Instrument

Bowdoin College Service-Learning Questionnaire Bowdoin Student Form

2. Service-Learning Questionnaire - Bowdoin Faculty Form

Conducted at the end of each semester, the questionnaire asks faculty about the level of success they had in integrating the service-learning project into the course material and their perceptions of how the project affected student learning. The questionnaire also encourages faculty to share lessons learned by participating in the project and make suggestions for future improvement.

Survey Instrument

Bowdoin College Service-Learning Questionnaire Bowdoin Faculty Form

3. Service-Learning Questionnaire - Community Partner Form

Conducted at the end of each semester, the questionnaire asks the community partner whether the service-learning project actually met an organizational need or was of value to the organization. The questionnaire also encourages the community partner to suggest ways in which the implementation of the project or communications with students could be improved.

Survey Instrument

Bowdoin College Service-Learning Questionnaire Community Partner Form


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Maintained by Margaret Allen, Bowdoin College Office of Institutional Research
Last Update: December 15, 2004
E-mail: mallen2@bowdoin.edu