Can community engagement transform your university experience?

With help and supervision from Laura Ambrosio, students who choose this course will be required to collect, analyze and present longitudinal, quantitative and qualitative data measuring the impact of the Introduction to Community Engagement (AHL2700 and AHL2300) courses.

These courses were first offered by the Faculty of Arts in 2018. It would be useful to know whether the courses, which have seen enrollment increase every year since then—even during the pandemic—have had a significant impact on the development of students’ transferable skills.  

This study will be based on a survey previously conducted among 600 students who completed a Community Service Learning (CSL) placement as part of their French as a Second Language (FLS), English as a Second Language (ESL) or Second Language Instruction (SLI) courses.

The survey, which received responses from just over sixty students, helped us confirm the validity of incorporating CSL.Some of the results, which included both quantitative (Likert scale) and qualitative (open-ended questions) data, were presented at a number of national and international conferences. The results will be published in a forthcoming publication.  

This study will enable the professor, OLBI and the community engagement learning team to identify the strengths of these courses and areas for potential improvement.  

One or two students could contribute to this research by enrolling in the course. This will be an opportunity for them to develop research skills and to cultivate the transferable skills needed to complete a supervised independent project. See: https://www.uottawa.ca/en/news-all/uocompetencies-training-life.