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ExpLearn: Community-Based Learning

Community-based learning activities are intentionally designed, coordinated, and executed learning experiences in community-based settings that enhance participants’ academic learning, contribute to their personal growth, and increase their civic engagement while concurrently benefiting the community or communities in which these activities are embedded. Examples of this category include service-learning, volunteering, community service projects, living-learning communities, Days of Service, and civic engagement (course-based, for credit).

Campus Resources

Community Engagement and Partnerships
Office of Service-Learning & Civic Engagement

  • Zines & Community [ART 3930]

    UNF students help community members at the library put together and produce lithographs.Zines & Community is a studio art course focused on creating community interaction through the production of small press publications, posters, pamphlets, workshops, and events. Throughout their history, zines have held a place to highlight stories and histories not found in the mainstream. In this class, students explore Zines and small press publishing to engage with and build community. Students work together as a collective to learn and develop strategies and skills related to community-based learning, including teamwork, active listening, and problem-solving. This course considers the potential for collective expression using creativity and skills to interact with community partners through research, service-learning, and workshops, to capture their stories for books, pamphlets, posters, workshops, and events to amplify the voices in our community.

    The class was offered for the first time in Fall 2023 and had 15 students enrolled. The students worked with the Jacksonville Public Library where they learned about the Zine Library, created a free takeaway zine about the collection, and hosted two zine nights, where over 175 people from the community came to learn about and create zines. Throughout the semester, the students discussed group work, what democracy looks like in small and big ways, and the roles and responsibilities of listening to and working with community partners. They examined the roles we play as citizens, and how we work together to build the communities we want to see in the world. 

  • National Identity and Migration (NIM) [IDH 1923]

    Honors students host a Halloween party with elementary students child has on a toucan head pieceAll Honors first-year students participate in service learning during their first semester on campus. The service experience offers students an opportunity to practice leadership and problem-solving skills and see how much impact even a teenager who is committed can make in their community.

    Depending on the theme of the class, a range of options for service are available. For example, many students take a class exploring national identity and migration. In this class, students working with three local nonprofit organizations select from seven different service opportunities to help new immigrants adapt to the country. Each student spends about 20 hours over the semester either working in an after-school third-fifth grade reading program at the YMCA, coaching soccer in a local elementary school, teaching English to adults, hosting American holiday events for elementary school children, creating an online map of resources to help immigrants settle in Jacksonville, raising money to support a local refugee resettlement effort, or making films about immigrants in Jacksonville.

    In turn, the local immigrant community, alumni, and other faculty participate in a simulation activity that puts students in the shoes of families coming to Jacksonville through the federal refugee resettlement program. Together, these two experiences supplement what the students learn in lectures and readings with a hands-on understanding of the challenges that people face when they leave their homeland and try to belong in a new country.

  • Service-Learning in the Deaf Community [INT 3951]

    UNF students showing posters of their work to community members.A course for American Sign Language (ASL)/English Interpreter Undergraduate Students, Service-Learning in the Deaf Community results in a semester capstone event where students plan, organize, and host a forum to share poster presentations or conduct an online webinar. Both forum presentations focus on areas they identify with their Deaf Community partners as potential gaps or needs within their respective local Deaf Community.

    Students discuss sustainability challenges, barriers to resolving community gaps, and their readiness to participate in ameliorating gaps. Some of the themes that students identify relate to lack of communication accessibility, non-Deaf community awareness, the development of innovative technology for the Deaf community, sign language interpreter fluency, and self-advocacy.

    The forum includes Deaf community members, ASL/English interpreting students, Deaf education students, faculty, staff, and other UNF students from the ASL Zone Living-Learning Community and the Silent Ospreys (Student ASL Club). The online forum included Deaf community members from other areas of Florida, Georgia, and Pennsylvania, while the campus forum included community members from Northeast Florida and the city of Jacksonville. In follow-up conversations with Deaf community members, they reported being impressed with student learning and engagement in this project.