Service-Learning Australia

In service-learning, your students must achieve a full range of learning goals and service goals.  To know how well these goals are being achieved, you need to identify baselines which are very clear to you and to your students. Data collected for the baseline will allow you to find out how well the program achieved what was intended, what parts of the program contributed most (or least) to the outcomes and what could be done differently next time.

Baselines need to be identified for the:

Academic learning goals.
You will be experienced in identifying the academic baseline of your students and the academic learning goals.

Other learning goals (changes in values and attitudes, community, career, interpersonal, learning to be a learner etc.)
To identify the other learning goals, you need to collect information about the students’ attitudes, behaviours etc.  You might decide to simply question the students, or you might also survey their parents and other teachers to you get a fuller picture of students’ interests, values, needs etc.

Service goals. 
To be clear about progress towards reaching the service goals, your students need to identify the baseline against which they can measure their achievements.  This baseline information should be quantifiable so your students can clearly see the impact of their service at the end of the project.

Examples:

Baseline:
Currently, our school has 20 kilos of rubbish every day and no recycling.
Sources of Evidence:
Collecting and weighing rubbish every day over a one week period.

Baseline:
Currently, 90% of students at our school think that bullying is a big problem.
Sources of Evidence:
Survey of the entire student population

Baseline:
Currently, 4 (or 4%) of the 100 residents in the local aged care centre are comfortable using computers.  40 residents (or 40%) would like to use computers to contact their family – perhaps by learning how to use the email, or be on facebook with their grandchildren!
Sources of Evidence:
Written survey and interviews with residents and staff of aged care facility.