Southern Europe
In the spirit of “Enhancing service-learning”, an international conference was held in Italy, bringing together representatives from Catholic universities in Italy, Spain and Portugal, as well as students and community partners from different cities.
Jointly organized by the Sacro Cuore Catholic University and the Southern European hub of the Universitate Programme, the event was held on Thursday, 11th April, at the university campus in Brescia. The meeting revolved around evaluating the service-learning approach and ways to improve its design and implementation to give more and more quality to the projects and the institutionalization processes in universities.
Uniservitate representatives from the Southern Europe hub with Andrés Peregalli, Uniservitate Programme vice-coordinator
The Uniservitate Programme team included Andrés Peregalli, vice-coordinator; Maria Cinque, from LUMSA and member of the Academic Sounding Board; and Almudena Eizaguirre, Ariane Díaz Iso and María García Feijoo from the University of Deusto, the institution coordinating the Southern Europe hub. Other participants were Cinzia Albanesi from the Università di Bologna, Rosita Deluigi from the Università di Macerata, Rita Paiva e Pona from the Universidade Católica Portuguesa and Irene Culcasi from the European Association for Service-Learning in Higher Education. Mario Taccolini, Livia Cadei, Domenico Simeone and Elena Marta represented the host institution, Sacro Cuore Catholic University.
The participants agreed that “they evaluate to obtain information that interprets and challenges what they think, do and know and to promote a holistic education of solidarity humanism that unites the head, the heart, the hands, the feet and the soul”.
Participants of the international conference in the Sacro Cuore Catholic University campus, in Brescia
Contrary to the evaluation procedures that are currently very widespread and almost exclusively focus on the ‘students’ memory’, this meeting highlighted the importance of ‘learning to evaluate in a multidimensional, multifactorial and participatory way’. In this way, they affirmed, it implies a cultural transformation given that it challenges the tradition of the institutions and involves working on the homo academicus or the way of being in the universities.
The discussions and presentations portrayed evaluation as participatory and an action that gives rise to multiple voices, contributing to the deepening of democracy by promoting the participation of students, faculty and community partners. Thus, service-learning and its evaluation help learn more (not less) and learn better (not worse) and allow people to assess the experience while contributing to academic excellence through solidarity.
The Uniservitate team of the University of Deusto highlighted the participants’ diversity of perspectives. When asked about the implications of the meeting for the Southern Europe hub, which the Deusto team coordinates, its members affirmed that the experience allowed them to broaden their knowledge. It was also relevant to networking with colleagues engaged in similar initiatives. They added that it was a milestone in the institutionalization process of the hub universities that strengthened their capacity to collaborate in different actions linked to the Uniservitate programme.
Mario TACCOLINI,Almudena EIZAGUIRRE and Andrés PEREGALLI, in the institutional welcome during the international conference “Giving value to service-learning”.
Andrés Peregalli, the vice-coordinator of the Uniservitate Programme, stated that the conference and its discussions referred “to the treasure that is the service-learning approach, a lamp that is lit and needs to be shown and placed on its stand (Lk. 11, 33-54) so that those who come in may see the light of the training experience of the participants, contributing to solving problems with the community and achieving the education that the 21st century requires.”
During that day, there were some questions about the evaluation process. Some answers were the following:
● What should be evaluated? Learning as well as service should. The quality of learning is assessed, for example, concerning the link with the disciplinary contents to tackle a social problem, the integration of interdisciplinary contents, the use of skills and values, the acquisition of new knowledge, and the capacity for feedback and self-evaluation. The quality of the service is assessed in terms of the frequency of activities, community satisfaction, networking between institutions and local organizations, the sustainability of the proposal, and the achievement of social change objectives in the medium and long term.
● How evaluation in service-learning should be carried out? Evaluation should be in a participatory way, with clear rules and criteria, with qualitative and quantitative techniques, with mixed techniques, using a methodological triangulation that reinforces the information and data, but also from the constant feedback that professors, researchers, students and community partners provide when designing and implementing the projects.
● When should it be carried out? At every stage of a learning project —it is a cross-cutting process: in its design (ex-ante evaluation), during implementation (monitoring) and afterwards (ex-post evaluation).
● Why evaluate? Because you need to assess, to measure what you do, what you know and what you are; and because you learn in many places, not just at university or school.
● Where to evaluate? In the classroom, in the organizations, in the places where the projects are implemented; because it is part of a community because the University is meant to be an experience ‘which goes forth’ and is part of a weft, of a network, established with other participants in the community.
● Who should evaluate? Students, faculty and community partners.
● What is the aim of the evaluation? The evaluation seeks to improve learning and service, alongside its quality (to transform and transform oneself), to promote fraternity.