Service Learning in Higher Education: best practices from the Ehnance project

Within the Bologna Process (Wihlborg & Teelke, 2014) and in the various European reforms (EUA Trends, 2018; EHEA, 2015; Eurydice, 2017), one of the main missions of modern higher education systems is to provide students with the key competences to manage their life and career plans in a complex and challenging society. The levels of early dropout and student failure still remain very high and the youth disengagement rate is one of the social and economic risks in Europe. The integration of experiential learning in the academic curriculum is one of the priorities for higher education systems. The achievement of this goal would lead to the strengthening of each university’s active role in promoting the civic engagement of all students and the academic community. Consequently, the challenge for universities is to improve the quality of teaching, hence the need to implement innovative student- centred teaching methodologies.The sociologist Edgar Morin has stated that a reform of universities can only pass through a reform of thinking, in order to train “adults more capable of facing their destiny, more capable of making their living flourish, more capable of relevant knowledge, more capable of understanding human, historical, social and planetary complexities” (Morin, 2015, p. 35; personal translation). In this scenario, the Service Learning model (Puig at all., 2007) is acquiring greater relevance among the teaching methodologies used in universities also in the Italian context. This promotes learning in real situations, involving students in civic initiatives and social pro- grammes which benefit both the student involved in the learning process and the community. This methodology underlies the rediscovery of the value of a didactic oriented towards the integral education and development of the student. A didactic oriented towards these objectives is a support to encounter, to move away from self-referen- tiality, enhancing the active role of teachers and students as subjects of responsible action in a system of innova- tive educational relations between university and the society, in which it is not only individual competence that grows and develops, but the entire community. This was investigated by the Erasmus+ project, called “ENHANCE – Enhancing Career and Service Learning in Higher Education”(2021-1-ES01-KA220-HED-000031128), which involved 6 universities, a research center for career guidance, an IT company specialised in career guidance plat- forms. Among the various project initiatives, the project investigated the learning impact of Service Learning ex- periences through a collection of testimonies from university students who had experienced it. The survey sample involved students coming from 5 different European countries and belonging to the 6 partner universities of the project. In particular, an attempt was made to map some significant SL best practices, analysing in depth some specific indicators, among which: skills acquired, value attributed to the experience in terms of support to career planning, to the development of civic engagement and a sustainable mindset, networking opportunities, signifi- cance of the experience with respect to one’s own study path, quality of the training offer. The aim of the survey was to understand the correlation between Service Learning experiences and the students’ learning outcomes.