IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jijerp/v19y2022i5p2749-d759719.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Stand Together by Staying Apart: Extreme Online Service-Learning during the Pandemic

Author

Listed:
  • Christian Compare

    (Department of Psychology “Renzo Canestrari”, University of Bologna, 40127 Bologna, Italy)

  • Cinzia Albanesi

    (Department of Psychology “Renzo Canestrari”, University of Bologna, 40127 Bologna, Italy)

Abstract

Service-Learning (SL) is an experience that allows students to (a) participate in activities co-designed in partnership by universities and local organizations and (b) reflect on the service activity in such a way as to gain an enhanced sense of responsibility. These experiences represent significant ways to meet and experience real-world contexts for students. The COVID-19 pandemic required Higher Education Institutions to rethink and shift in-presence courses to online platforms. This transition included SL courses as well. This study aimed to explore the responsibility and democratic dimensions elicited by an extreme online Service-Learning (XE-SL) experience and the perceptions of engaging in exclusive online service activities with local communities during the COVID-19 Italian national quarantine. A qualitative driven mixed-method longitudinal approach was chosen to triangulate qualitative (reflexive journal) and quantitative (pre-post questionnaire) data from 20 university students. The findings shed a positive light on the capability of XE-SL to promote a sense of responsibility, civic engagement, and the acquirement of democratic and transferrable competencies, such as perspective-taking, adaptability, cultural background respect, global mindedness, teamwork, leadership, communication, creativity, and organizational competencies. Reflection, connection, and being agents of change for the community were perceived as the major assets of the XE-SL experience, while adapting face-to-face SL experiences to exclusively online activities evoked ambivalent feelings in students. The study suggests a rethinking of the design XE-SL and other forms of eSL with the inclusion of more structured interactive activities within community contexts to favor students’ sense of connection to the community organizations or NGOs.

Suggested Citation

  • Christian Compare & Cinzia Albanesi, 2022. "Stand Together by Staying Apart: Extreme Online Service-Learning during the Pandemic," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(5), pages 1-17, February.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:5:p:2749-:d:759719
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/5/2749/pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/5/2749/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:5:p:2749-:d:759719. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.