Taking Spanish into the Community: A Novice’s Guide to Service-Learning

Greater interest from students, universities, and communities has increased pressure on faculty to design and implement service-learning courses. Often with no prior experience and limited institutional and programmatic guidance, faculty must make their way through a growing body of literature on service-learning. This article presents a novice service-learning instructor’s guide to designing, implementing, and assessing a service-learning course through the example of an upper-division Spanish translation course. I present theoretical explanations of why service-learning works and how to design and assess the course while delineating the fundamental principles of successful service-learning. Results show that service-learning strengthens student learning and civic engagement and that service-learning courses may be led successfully by instructors with limited time and experience.