We’re excited to invite faculty, instructors, staff, and students to join us in building and sustaining our Service-Learning Initiative. We have lots of ways to get involved, and we’d love to chat with you one-on-one about your ideas for service learning at CCA!
Here are a few opportunities we’re actively recruiting for:
Share Your Projects and Service-Learning Testimonial: Are you already integrating service learning into your courses? Use this form to submit a short description of your project and a brief endorsement of service learning at CCA. We'll add your projects to our database to help inspire and support others.
Join the Service-Learning Cohort: Connect with fellow faculty and staff through monthly cohort meetings. These meetings offer a space to share ideas, troubleshoot challenges, and build momentum for a strong, collaborative service-learning culture on campus. Use this form to register your interest in the Service-Learning Cohort, and we’ll add you to our planning meeting.
Contribute to the CommunityKit, CCA’s new Service Learning OER: Help us grow our library of open educational resources! Stipends of up to $1,000 (any mix of the materials below) are available for faculty who contribute to the following:
Project Descriptions ($100 each): Brief, adaptable assignments or projects that include instructor and student-facing materials. These help instructors plug service learning into existing courses.
Course Units or Modules ($250 each): Ready-to-teach modules that include readings, activities, assignments, and assessments focused on service learning. These may be discipline-specific or general.
Full Courses ($500 each): Complete course packages including syllabus, calendar, lesson plans, assessments, and integrated service-learning elements. These should be ready for another faculty member to adapt and implement.
More information about CommunityKit is available on the next tab, or you can reach out the Heather.Lang@ccaurora.edu for more information.
Are you using or planning to use service learning in your course? We invite you to contribute to CommunityKit: An OER Service-Learning Tool Kit, a new open educational resource (OER) being developed by the Community College of Aurora. This collaboratively created resource will offer practical, customizable materials to support instructors, students, and community partners in designing and implementing effective service-learning experiences.
All accepted materials will be published in PressBooks and licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) to ensure wide and adaptable use. Contributors will be compensated thanks to support from the CDHE OER grant.
We’re looking for submissions in these categories:
Deadline for Submissions: September 30, 2025
To express interest or ask questions, email Heather Lang at heather.lang@ccaurora.edu
Final materials will be reviewed in Fall 2025, with publication planned for Spring 2026.
All submissions should use the appropriate template:
What is Service Learning?
Service-learning is a teaching and learning strategy that integrates meaningful community service with course content and reflection to enrich the learning experience, teach social and civic responsibility, and strengthen communities.
Students who serve:
a benefit to the community
curricular connections
a real world project
Service-learning design questions:
Want to know more? Contact us at TheHub.CCA@ccaurora.edu.
Service-learning student outcomes:
Pre-mapping: Thinking of scope
Pre-mapping: Two ways to assign community-based projects
Students decide. Assign students to research and brainstorm community topics and projects. Share project examples after the exploratory activities to illustrate concretely how service projects can look and how they may vary.
Instructor decides. An instructor may want to choose a target community, a community partner, and a project ahead of time.
Key Components in a Service Learning Project:
Mapping the Community-based Project
1. Students research the audience/community where they will do their community-based project
2. Students research the community issue
3. Students perform 1st hand research by interviewing people in the target community, to include one direct community partner
4. Students design the community-based service project based on their research
5. Students write a brief (one-page) project proposal with their group
6. Students perform the community-based service
7. Students reflect on learning and experiences
8. Faculty assess student learning throughout the community-based project process
Service Learning Project Example
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Announcement to Students about the Service Learning Project
Service learning activities are efforts which address a community need. You will use the knowledge you have learned in this course to complete a meaningful service-focused project which impacts a community. The components will include a proposal, service work, and a final paper/presentation. |
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Types of Service Examples for Students You may choose to do one of the following, as individuals, in pairs or in small groups: 1. Community Volunteerism – Students may choose to integrate classroom learning with experiential learning through involvement with human need at a community service agency. The service projects will require at least 2 hours of service (in person or virtual). The service-learning project will contribute real-life insight and experience to the issues discussed in the course. |
The Project Assignment Process and Deliverables
PREPARE TO SERVE
3. Complete the Service-Learning Student Planning Sheet
4. Propose your Service Learning Project
DO THE PROJECT
SHARE YOUR LEARNING
Service Learning paper/presentation:
This is your opportunity to reflect on your “real world” service experience using the course perspective, concepts, theories, and principles. This analysis helps students apply the concepts of their course to new and different situations and to develop higher levels of understanding of the concepts and theories.
Get and Give feedback:
Use the following questions to help your students think about their relationship to the community, its needs and priorities, and how they might make a difference through a Service Learning project:
Student Reflective Questions
What did I learn about the course content?
What did I learn about my civic identity?
How did I rise to a challenge by this assignment? (hours worked, decisions I had to make, this work was meaningful to me)
How did I learn from others in this assignment? (peers, professors, community members, people and circumstances uncommon for me)
How did I improve my performance on this project? (practice, multiple steps, reflection, feedback)
How did I apply my learning to a real situation outside of class?
Student Perspectives
"I never thought that I would be speaking with such powerful people in my community. I have always wanted to make an impact and this class gave me a pathway to do so. I also learned the best way to others is help is to help them understand/befriend themselves. Through those new relationships, I feel I am really making a difference. I never would have done this on my own. I now know so much more on a topic I love to babble about and I can spread these practices to others on a larger scale." Service Learning Student
"I chose to be part of ‘A Night of Music for Rebuilding Puerto Rico” because my stepfather is a Puerto Rican native. We rarely talk about the aftermath of Hurricane Maria and I thought maybe this could be an opportunity to be educated on all of the struggles the island is still facing as well as provide me a chance to be able to talk about it with my family. I was involved in this program by donating and speaking at the event.
I took so much from this event. It was inspiring watching so many students speaking out about how they feel we should be helping Puerto Rico. It was refreshing to see that much drive at such a young age.
I would highly recommend this Service-Learning event to others. It opened up much-needed conversations about what’s going on outside of our community. Anyone willing to learn will learn something."
- PHI 111 Student
A Community for Naturalists · iNaturalist: iNaturalist, a powerful citizen science platform, enables students to contribute meaningful data to scientific research while engaging with their local communities through service learning projects. Students can conduct biodiversity surveys, create educational materials for community members, or monitor species for conservation efforts, all while developing valuable skills in scientific observation and data collection. By integrating iNaturalist into service learning, instructors can connect course content with real-world environmental challenges while helping students make tangible contributions to local conservation and community education efforts.
Zooniverse: Zooniverse, the world's largest citizen science platform, offers students the opportunity to contribute to real scientific research across diverse fields including astronomy, biology, history, and climate science through structured service learning projects. Students can engage with authentic research tasks such as classifying galaxies, transcribing historical documents, or identifying wildlife in camera trap images, while developing critical thinking skills and understanding of scientific methodologies. By incorporating Zooniverse projects into service learning, instructors can help students make meaningful contributions to global research initiatives while fostering a deeper understanding of course content and the collaborative nature of scientific discovery.
CCA’s Spring Day of Service is 4-16-25! We’re writing to encourage you to have your students sign up and give them in class credit to complete an act of service. This could be an assignment replacement or an extra credit assignment.
Service Learning is a great way to introduce experiential learning and reflection in your class. This is an excellent opportunity to try service learning without changing your lesson plans. Here's an assignment prompt to help brainstorm ideas on how to assess a student’s participation and how it will fit to your class.
This Spring’s Day of Service is run by Student Success and Student Leadership. For more information on the pedagogical benefits of service learning please reach out to Hub Scholar, Tanya Cook, and consider joining CCA’s Service-Learning Cohort.
Directions:
For our homework assignment or journal assignment this week, please participate in CCA’s Day of Service on 4-16-25.
Sign up here: Spring 2025 Day of Service Sign Up Survey
For more information on the Day of Service Event contact: studentleadership.development@ccaurora.edu or call 303-360-4763.
Answer the following questions in full sentences and submit a .doc or .pdf file in the D2L assignment folder. You may also submit a video or audio file with your answers to the following questions.
Visual Graphic Design
Early Childhood Education
Business
Computer Science
Education and ESL
English
Fire Science & Community Safety
Math
Cinematic Arts
Nursing
Psychology
Political Science
Read "Learning for Justice", a thoughtful essay about the days after the election in classrooms, and lead conversations across the community focusing on leading thoughtful, constructive conversations: talking about issues, not personalities; identifying concerns; processing emotions; processing next steps.
How to lead thoughtful, constructive conversations:
Sciences
Sociology
Miscellaneous Service Learning Projects- Cross-Curricular