ASL Benefits for Students
Cognitive Development
- Improves student engagement with the subject matter
- Encourages active rather than passive learning
- Improves the learning process and products
- Links theory with practice
- Illustrates transferability of knowledge outside of classroom
- Promotes retention of learning and understanding
- Forces/promotes/facilitates critical analysis
- Provides mechanisms for students to reflect on learning process itself
- Increases awareness of macro-societal issues and problems
Career Development
- Provides guidance for career choice
- Provides experience for career choice
- Provides greater confidence in career choice
- Clarifies professional opportunities and challenges
- Develops specific job skills
- Exposes students to committed professionals, volunteers, and organizations
Personal Growth
- Enhances self-esteem and sense of personal efficacy by allowing students to "make a difference" through the specific set of knowledge and skills developed in coursework
- Increases sense of civic responsibility
- Improves interpersonal skills
- Increases tolerance/support for diversity
- Challenges students by taking them out of their "comfort zones"
- Creates personally responsible citizens, participatory citizens, and reforming citizens
Benefits for Faculty
- Enriches and enlivens teaching
- Changes faculty role from "expert on top" to "expert on tap"
- Creates awareness of societal issues as they relate toacademic areas of interest
- Provides authentic assessment opportunities
- Enables teaching to become more process oriented
- Engages diverse learning styles
- Identifies new areas for research and publication
Benefits for Community
- Enables community development and renewal
- Provides substantial human resources to meet varied needs of community organizations
- Broadens future volunteer pool
- Creates spirit of civic responsibility among future community leaders
- Infuses creativity and enthusiasm from college students
- Creates links between campus and community organizations