Creating an Attractive and Challenging Service-Learning Course for History Majors

Bringing community service to the classroom has been both a challenging and an invigorating teaching experience at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth (UMD). This paper explores several challenges and questions confronted when redesigning and delivering HST 201, Critical Skills for the History Major, a required course offered to history majors, preferably in their sophomore year. Specifically, HST 201 familiarizes and prepares students with the necessary historical skills to approach upper-level History seminars with greater confidence and proficiency. Another core goal is practicing awareness and access to the local historical context for our current globalized society. With those goals in mind, the course I redesigned during Fall 2012 aimed at an encompassing service-learning component under an innovative blended format. Students revisited methodological approaches to critically assess the study of history (global, national, and local) and to explore different analytical categories (e.g., race, class, and gender). Students applied this knowledge in six reports related to a minimum 15-hour service-learning project in the community. By examining the varieties of historical approaches, students discussed and practiced how to identify and incorporate the advantages of historical studies in their work in the community. This paper assesses students’ critical-thinking participation in the blended format and the effectiveness of adapting the scholarly agenda to the process of building (and sustaining) university-community partnership.