Essay Sample: Community-Engaged Learning and COVID 19

📌Category: Coronavirus, Education, Learning
📌Words: 1074
📌Pages: 4
📌Published: 10 June 2022

In 2020, the coronavirus changed the way everyday life looked. Face-to-face interaction became less safe, and lockdowns happened across the world. Stores and schools across the world closed their doors. Suddenly teachers and students had to transition to online classrooms. It was a change no one was completely prepared for even for classes that seem easy to transition to an online format. Imagine the difficulty for teachers who teach classes that thrive in the classroom. Many science teachers had to find ways to replace in person labs. There is another difficult type of course to recreate in an online format: community-engaged learning. New challenges arises when the purpose of a course is no longer for students to learn, but for students to impact their communities in new ways.

Angie Meija is an assistant professor at University of Minnesota Rochester (UMR),and she teaches community-engaged classes. UMR states that the university is “committ[ed] to empower students to be engaged citizens and collaborate with the local communiy to solve healthcare challenges” (1). In her essay, “Community-Engaged Learning in Times of COVID-19”, Meija discusses her difficulty navigating how to give her students the same experience with this new format of classes. Community-engaged courses are difficult to navigate normally. Julier, Livingston, and Goldblatt describe the questions that need to be addressed when attempting to teach a community-engaged course.

First, instructors need to define what community-engagement means and how it will help their students. They say, “community-engagement may take many forms” (57). In Meija’s case. UMR concentrates on health-science, and her students engage with the community by working with nonprofit organizations and “provid[ing] early childhood education, coordinate health and social services for older adults, organize STEM-based after school programs, and help deliver citizenship and ESL curriculum and training for new Americans” (1). She states that the class was difficult, but before the pandemic, she had it under control. Meija notes that one of the biggest struggles of adapting to the new learning environment was the one-size-fits-all solutions that were thrown at instructors when her university switched to online classes. She notes that the main focuses was reaching learning objectives. The main goal of community-engaged learning was never to just meet learning objectives. Unlike other classes where students write notes from lectures, Meija had to still incoporate engagement into her courses. As Julier, Livingston, and Goldblatt stated, “community-engagement may take many forms” (57). Meija’s research led her to find virtual volunteering. This is one of the many forms community-engagement can take, and Meija saw that it was helping may classrooms. She saw that this would not help her classroom or community partners. Her students were not working with nonprofits that simply needed help managing social media accounts. They worked in nursing homes and schools. Her health-science students and the community they were serving would not get a meaningful experience from the class if they simply tried to move things to a virtual platform.

Second, Julier, Livingston, and Goldblatt says that instructors must figure out how to find community partnerships for their students. They recommend beginning projects and conversations. They also suggest using existing partnerships between the university and communities. Much of Meija’s difficulty with transitioning to online teaching was how students partnered with their community. UMR’s focus on health science leads to community-engagement that focuses on in-person interactions. Meija does not believe that community-engagement classes are impossible in an online format, but it is difficult and requires a lot of research and resources. With science labs, experiments can be videoed and the students can still learn close to the same lesson. With community-engagement, the same can not be said because each student will get something different out of the class and will impact the community in a different way.

Third, Julier, Livingston, and Goldblatt lists choosing what kid of writing assignments work best. They give two options to instructor. One option is to begin researching before students start community work, and students combine their research with community work for an end-of-semester-project. Option number two is beginning the course with community work, and students write about the troubles and conflicts they face during their experience. The options for writing assignments are minimized as a result of the coronavirus. Meija points out the struggles of transitioning her classes because of the lack of research on a situation such as suddenly moving to online school and limiting in-person interactions. Meija mentions that more research has been done which could allow students to utilize more current research in writing a paper about community-engagement in this new situation. The second option for writing assignment seems perfect for this time. Students can write about the struggles they faced while trying to engage with their community without being there in person interactions. This again does not fix all problems though because instructors, such as Meija, who could not just send her students to volunteer virtually. Finding writing assignments is just another struggle added to the list of things that make community-engaged learning so difficult.

The fourth question Julier, Livingston, and Goldblatt say many instructors have is how to know their students learned anything. This is a worry for any teacher, but community-engaged learning adds the extra desire for students to learn something about themselves or their community. Meija illustrates how the coronavirus did not help instructors feel better about their worries. She talks about the advice she received to focus on learning objectives and the solution of virtual volunteering. Focusing on learning objectives will not allow students to gain the same experience they would if they took the course before the pandemic. With a course that focuses on community-engagement, it is important that students learn more than just how to write a research paper or how to write for a fundraiser. It is also that the community is impacted by the students in the course. 

The final question Julier, Livingston, and Goldblatt tells instructors to focus on is how the community will benefit from the students. Goldblatt emphasizes the importance of instructors being active with the community partners. Meija mentions being active with the community partners at her university. In situations like schools closing, it is important that those relationships are already established. Having already establish these relationships makes it easier to communicate. There is already difficulty making these decisions about how to continue with the current situation without worrying about meeting everyone your students are working with.

In conclusion, the pandemic made school everywhere more complicated. Community-engagement is an already complicated course to plan and organize, and combined with the struggle of transitioning to online classrooms added to that stress. Research is being done to help establish how to handle the transition better. It is important that this research is done for the student attempting to take these courses, the instructors trying to make an impact on their students, and the community partners and nonprofit organization that receive help from these students.

Works Cited

Mejia, A. P. (2020). Community-Engaged Learning in Times of COVID-19, or, Why I'm Not Prepared to Transition My Class into an Online Environment. Public Philosophy Journal, 3(1).

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