Document Type

Article

Publication Date

3-2017

Department

Biological Sciences

School

Biological, Environmental, and Earth Sciences

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to measure student affective, behavior, and content (ABC) and global awareness outcomes after participating in a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)-based international service-learning (ISL) course and impacts on long-term retention in STEM fields. We compared experiences from 12 participants (undergraduate and graduate students) enrolled in a STEM-based ISL course with experiences from four students enrolled in the same course without the service-learning component. The ISL course involved classroom discussions on environmental topics and four local and ISL projects with community partners to contribute to conservation efforts. Data came from student responses on a civics awareness questionnaire, reflective journal entries, and responses captured during individual semistructured interviews 2 years after the course. Findings indicate positive improvements in affective outcomes, significant gains in civic awareness, differences in behaviors based on class of student, specific content gains related to service-learning activities, global awareness gains for all students, and differential impacts on retention in STEM-related fields.

Comments

Article available through a CC BY 3.0 license. More information about the article is available from the publisher's site: https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244017697155

Publication Title

Sage Open

Volume

7

Issue

1

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