Michaelann Jundt
Michaelann Jundt
Carlson Leadership & Public Service Center
University of Washington, Seattle Campus
Portfolios for Service Learning
The Carlson Center's goal is to facilitate academic connections to community-based learning opportunities for students. In Winter Quarter 2003, the Center's Director Michaelann Jundt worked with students of SOC 271 "Sociology of Deviance", on their service learning option. Jundt and the students in the course used the Portfolio tool to try to make more connections to the course material from their service-learning experiences. Jundt found that the prompts in these electronic portfolios afforded students the opportunity to make structured records of their work. Students could refer to those records during their experiences and possibly build on them in future service-learning work. Jundt also noted how the use of electronic portfolios helped the instructors manage a large number of students making regular reflections.
Student Experience with the Assignment
Student Joe Gombos described his experience of using the Portfolio Tool while taking the service learning option for SOC 271. His community partner was the Pike Place Market Senior Center. Gombos explained how using the Portfolio tool allowed him to archive and summarize his work and to do the work at his own pace. More importantly, Gombos noted that the portfolio prompts both served as a guide to the experience and helped him to apply the theories he was learning in the classroom to his service efforts. He felt encouraged to read ahead and strategize about how best to connect his coursework with his participation in service learning at the Senior Center. Additionally, the final paper for the course, given entirely online through the Portfolio tool, was a convenient option for this student's busy end-of-quarter schedule.
Presentation Video
Gombos and Jundt talked about their experiences at a forum entitled "Using Portfolios to Bridge Classroom, Community, and Career," held by the Program for Educational Transformation Through Technology.
You can watch a video of their presentation by selecting one of the connections below.
