the students worked. In all cases, the campaigns were not large organizations, and the students
made up a substantial portion of the workforce available to the campaign.
At random times during the course of the project we checked in with the campaigns and
organizations. This was initially done within two weeks after assignment to be sure that the
students had been in contact with the organizations. If there was a problem in communication an
email was sent to the student to be certain that they had received the phone call and/or email
from their organizations. After that, other check-ins were carried out approximately once a
month. Our goal was to be sure that any problems that crept up could be quickly eliminated, but
at the same time we did not want to be bothersome to the organization. Each of these check-ins
simply involved a phone call or email to each organization. Finally, at the end of the project we
contacted all the campaigns and organizations once more asking them for feedback on both the
project itself and on the role the students played in their organization.
What Happened?
An initial assessment of the service-learning project suggests that it was successful, at
least in a general way. While not all students had a well structured experience, and not all
organizations made effective use of the students available to them (as we detail below), even
those students that found their projects particularly frustrating appeared in their journaling and in
class discussions to be able to make connections between the classroom material and their “real
world” experience. Many students expressed either a written or verbal desire to participate in a
local project again. We asked students at the end to give us a general evaluation of the project
and the extent to which it allowed them to better understand their classroom work. Some
representative responses include:
•
This project was very useful in that it took classroom lessons and gave them a face.
Things we have been learning throughout our political science education about elections
17
Convention