A Literature Review Of Assessment For Community Service Type Of Experiential Learning

Abstract

Despite there has been a tremendous escalation in the need and attention for experiential learning over the last decades as the benefits of such learning have been merited by students, faculty, employers and communities, there is still a lack of direction on how these learning should be assessed, aligned with the appropriate learning outcomes and accredited within the curriculum in higher education. It is important to remember that experiential learning and teaching activities are not by tradition part of a degree curriculum. Unlike traditional classroom-based learning with outcomes that are valid and predictable, and the process are most familiar by academics. Teachers are often puzzled by the rationale behind why these activities are required to be delivered through their already over-scheduled degree. And more importantly, the issues of what kind of learning outcomes are these activities actually delivering – discipline-knowledge and/or graduate attributes are questionable, as “it is often the student who determines intentional measurable learning objectives” (Montrose, 2008). The questions should these activities be assessed and how should they be assessed to ensure it aligns with the learning outcomes also need answers. This leads to a certain amount of haziness and mismatch exists in both students and teachers perceptions as there is no known formula to easily assess some learning outcomes arise from experiential learning. As according to Quinn and Shurville (2009), “the hardest part of implementing experiential learning in both philosophical and practical terms is assessing the graduate attributes that are embodied within it.” Traditional classroom assessment approaches are often not suitable for experiential learning as it is difficult to measure these outcomes by just reporting the experiences, particularly these experiences maybe too personal to describe; we need approaches which do not just describe the situation but approaches that allow students to think deep in their experience in relation to the educational context. This paper presents a literature review on the diverse forms of assessment currently used for experiential learning in higher education. This will be the foundation work to deduce an assessment framework for a multidisciplinary community service learning project for students who engage in the recovery project of post-earthquake in Sichuan at a university in Hong Kong. Our discussion mainly focuses on the types of experiential learning such as community service learning and cooperative education placements which includes an outside organization in order to narrow the scope. The importance of assessment in higher education, the benefits and shortfalls of assessing students in higher education will also briefly included. This research literature can help us to further our understanding on how to develop and to better improve the curriculum so as to enhance the learning experiences in generic skills for Hong Kong undergraduates.