Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Service-Learning Progress

In December 2010, our university’s senate approved the proposal to make service-learning a compulsory credit-bearing subject for undergraduate students in 4-year bachelor programs starting in 2012.  At that time we had no such subjects.  So we started to design them.  In summer 2011, I co-taught the first service-learning subject, as a pilot.  In 2011-12, we continued to pilot several more subjects - offered them to the students in the then 3-year bachelor programs.  


In 2012-13, we offered them for real to the first batch of 4-year bachelor degree students.  There were only 6 such subjects with 189 students.  In 2013-14, we offered 38 subjects to about 2,000 students.  In 2014-15, we expect to offer 50+ subjects to approximately 3,000 students.  In 2015-16, we expect to offer ~70 subjects to ~4,000 students.  In 2016, the first such batch of students will graduate.  We will have achieved steady state by then - until the policy changes again.  

If we are not running the largest such programs in the world, we should be pretty close.  Amazing, isn’t it?


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