The Changing Face of Community Engagement in a Time of Crisis – Insights into an Undergraduate Service-Learning Course

Abstract

This chapter is a case study of the Joint Community-based Project (code: JCP) that is presented by the Faculty of Engineering, Built Environment and Information Technology at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. The JCP module is a macro compulsory undergraduate course. The need to adhere to the University’s strategic social responsiveness goal motivated the integration of community engagement into the Faculty’s undergraduate programme curriculum. The free-standing project-orientated community engagement course requires students to complete at least 40 hours of fieldwork and thereafter reflect on their experiences through various assignments. Since the advent of the module in 2011, an average of 1,700 students have registered for the course annually. Students form, on average, 500 groups and partner with more than 350 different university–community partners annually. The students are required to engage in a community service project to apply their knowledge to uplift the community. They have to address a specific need in a community to benefit that society. The exposure to authentic challenges afforded by means of their projects allows students to increase their awareness of their social responsibility and learn to work in diverse teams and multidisciplinary and multilingual environments and apply various life skills during the execution of the project. During the nationwide lockdown brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, students had to identify alternative ways to assist the communities.

The projects in which the students provided assistance included the following:

• Creating a mobile application (an app) for a project with the homeless community.

• Assisting teachers with teaching online.

• Developing various websites to assist learners with Mathematics.

• Teaching learners Mathematics via WhatsApp.

• Developing educational videos.

• Making masks for clinics and old age homes.

• Developing educational resources for disadvantaged pre-schools.

The lecturer and the students had to adapt to the challenges of working on community projects off-site. The chapter will discuss the various students’ projects and the lessons the students and course coordinator learnt on changing the module’s format in a time of crisis.

Citation

Jordaan, M. and Mennega, N. (2022), "The Changing Face of Community Engagement in a Time of Crisis – Insights into an Undergraduate Service-Learning Course", Sengupta, E. and Blessinger, P. (Ed.) International Case Studies in Service Learning (Innovations in Higher Education Teaching and Learning, Vol. 47), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 85-97. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2055-364120220000047006