This document describes a service-learning pedagogy course piloted at the University of Iowa. The course was interdisciplinary and allowed graduate students to design classroom projects involving community partnerships. Students reported being motivated by interests in effective teaching and service-learning approaches. The course helped students apply theory to design projects addressing local issues through activities like storytelling workshops and producing materials for international students.

2. WHAT THIS IS ABOUT
Weaving deep connections between teaching and the community is a
practice that requires support, and one means of initial support for
teachers is training in service-learning pedagogy. This poster invites
attendees to consider what motivates certain teachers to seek service-
learning training and in so doing help to shape training approaches more
appropriately.

3. THE SETUP
In spring 2012, two faculty members of the University of Iowa’s Rhetoric
Department piloted a course for graduate students in the pedagogy of
service-learning. Students who enrolled came from an array of disciplines,
including education, English, geography, and neuroscience. Students
designed a variety of projects that could be implemented in a classroom. In
doing so, they forged connections to partnering organizations in the
community. They also considered more deliberately the purposes of their
classrooms and the possibilities for teaching and learning that an
innovative, service-learning approach would present.

4. PRINCIPLES OF COURSE DESIGN
In designing the course, the instructors were guided by pragmatic
principles, primarily that the students would complete work that had a clear
application in their current classrooms or in their future careers as
teachers. Secondly, the instructors wanted to design a course in which
students would find a foundation in the theory and history of service-
learning while still having time and space to explore the array of service-
learning approaches being applied in the students’ home disciplines.
Students’ own motivations for enrolling in the course could, in this context,
frame each student’s approach to the course and the assignments.

5. STUDENT MOTIVATIONS
Students chose to enroll in the course for a variety of reasons. In general,
the interdisciplinary course attracted students who wanted to hone their
classroom teaching expertise. These students desired to gain experience in
course design via a service-learning approach and make their teaching
relevant beyond the walls of the classroom. Understanding the variety of
additional motivations and the relative importance students placed on
specific motivating factors helps provide a detailed picture of what
students valued in the course.
The most important factors as rated by students were ―My interest in the
subject,‖ ―I wanted to learn more about effective teaching,‖ and ―The
course’s interdisciplinarity.‖ All of the participants rated these factors as
Extremely Important or Very Important with one exception: a single student
rated ―I wanted to learn more about effective teaching‖ as ―Neither
Important nor Unimportant.‖

6. OUTCOMES
Bethany Smith (Ph.D. student, English Department, University of Iowa):
Narrating Iowa City: Fostering Media Literacy and Community Engagement
through local storytelling
Annemarie Steffes (Ph.D. student, English Department, University of Iowa):
Navigating Empathy and Ethics in Art: Service-Learning with The Laramie
Project
Heather Draxl (Ph.D. student, Language ,Literacy, and Culture, University of
Iowa):
Writing for, with, and about community: Creating resources for
international students in Iowa city

7. NARRATING IOWA CITY: FOSTERING MEDIA LITERACY AND
COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT THROUGH LOCAL STORYTELLING
The project encourages course participants to see themselves not only as
students at UI but as citizens of Iowa City. Students use the multimedia
storytelling website CrossingBorders.us to explore local issues and
community narratives. Through readings and discussions, they analyze
and evaluate media narratives about Iowa City and its residents. Next, they
work in teams with Crossing Borders community partners to prepare and
facilitate workshops aimed at working together to critically read—and
create—community narratives. Workshop participants can choose to
contribute their narratives to the website.
Through the narratives they encounter and create, students participants
engage with literacy and composition skills in a holistic, creative way. They
practice analysis, argumentation, and advocacy; identify and evaluate the
underlying arguments of other authors; and craft their own arguments
through strategic narration. Interacting with Iowa City’s physical and
personal geographies encourages engagement with the community.

8. NAVIGATING EMPATHY AND ETHICS IN ART: SERVICE-LEARNING
WITH THE LARAMIE PROJECT
My Rhetoric class spends a great deal of the semester discussing The
Laramie Project and the politics of its representation: what ethical
responsibilities do the playwrights have in representing a grief-stricken
town? I wanted a service-learning project that requires my students to
navigate the pitfalls of recording others’ experiences themselves.
I was able to partner with a local theatre organization that routinely
produced autobiographical theatre: Working Group Theatre in Iowa City.
WGT has and continues to create productions that record Iowa City’s
experiences and memories.
My service-learning project asks students to record and transcribe
interviews for the theatre’s current project. While they would contribute to
the theatre’s final production, they would also create an independent
art/narrative piece to work in conjunction with WGT’s performance. The
project then concludes with a final paper that reflects on their artistic
choices – both the successes and the failures.

9. WRITING FOR, WITH, AND ABOUT COMMUNITY: CREATING
RESOURCES FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS IN IOWA CITY
In Writing Partnerships: Service-Learning in Composition (2000) Thomas Deans
outlines three models for connecting composition students to communities:
writing for communities, writing with communities, and writing about
communities. This project incorporates aspects of all three models by asking
students from different campuses to collaborate on a community writing project.
Composition students at Kirkwood Community college Rhetoric students at the
University of Iowa work together to provide outreach and information for newly
arrived international students and citizens in Iowa City. This project originated
from working with Sudanese American students at Kirkwood Community College
in Iowa City and grew out of an effort to help facilitate cross cultural
experiences, collaborative writing experiences, and community engagement.
Students write for the community by providing texts for community members,
they write with the community to produce these texts, and they write about the
community in individual reflective pieces. The project concludes with students
making plans for incoming classes so that the project can be sustained.

10. REFERENCES
Butin, D. W. (2010). Service-Learning in Theory and Practice. New York, NY:
Palgrave
Bringle, R. G., Hatcher, J. A., & Games, R. (1997). Engaging and supporting
faculty in service learning. Journal of public service and outreach, 2(1), 43-
51.
Bryant, J. A., Schonemann, N. and Karpa, D., Eds. (2011). Integrating service-
learning into the university classroom. Burlington, MA: Jones and Bartlett.
Deans, Thomas. (2000). Writing partnerships: Service-learning in composition.
Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.
Gelmon, S., Holland, B., Shinnamon, A., & Morris, B. (1998). Community-based
education and service: The HPSISN experience. Journal of interprofessional
care, 12(3), 257-272.
Hesser, G. (1995) Faculty assessment of student learning: Outcomes attributed
to service-learning and evidence of changes in faculty attitudes about
experiential education. Michigan journal of community service learning, 2(1),
33-42.

11. REFERENCES
O’Meara, K. A. (2011) Faculty civic engagement: New training, assumptions, and
markets needed for the engaged american scholar. In J. Saltmarch and
M.Hartley (Eds.) "To serve a larger purpose": Engagement for democracy
and the transformation of higher education. Philadelphia: Temple University
Press
Saltmarch, J. & Hartley, M. (2011) "To Serve a Larger Purpose": Engagement for
Democracy and the Transformation of Higher Education. Philadelphia:
Temple University Press
Speck, B. W. & Hoppe, S. L. (2004). Service-learning: History, theory, and issues.
Westport, CT: Praeger
Zieren, G.R. & Stoddard, P.H. (2004). The historical origins of service-learning in
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: The Transplanted and indigenous
traditions.In B.W. Speck and S.L. Hoppe (Eds.) Service-learning: History,
theory, andissues (pp. 23-42). Westport, CT: Preager