actually had a volunteer coordinator on staff had far fewer problems connecting with students
than those that did not. In spite of the obstacles the experiences were overwhelmingly positive.
Feedback from the Organizations
We learned that there should be an opportunity for the organizations to provide more
feedback than we solicited, perhaps even anonymously. When dealing with politicians,
especially, there is the risk that they will give you a “political answer” when asked how the
project went. The two candidates running for re-election had no negative remarks at all about the
students. This could indicate that they simply did not give us the information because of their
own role in the community. Every other organization or campaign included at least one
constructive suggestion for the service component in the future. There was no requirement for
the organization to comment on each student directly. At least four organizations expressed the
desire to have a follow up meeting after the project directly with students to give them feedback,
though time did not permit this. There were also suggestions to allow the organizations to sign a
time log as students did their work and comment positively or negatively about how they
performed. Perhaps providing an anonymous survey and/or comment section for the organization
could create a comfortable atmosphere to provide feedback without fear of political backlash.
Knowing about the Project Beforehand
Many students expressed the desire to have known about the service-learning
requirement beforehand by listing it in the course description. Because course descriptions at
Iowa are set a year in advance, and because the instructor did not decide to “ramp up” to a full
service-learning experience until two months before the start of the course, this was not possible
this time, but should be done in the future. Even so, the vast majority of students reflected a
positive experience that they would repeat. We might not want to exclude students from this
experience who, had they known ahead of time, would not have chosen to take the course. So it
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Convention