Principles of Best Practice

Faculty at Mount Holyoke College who have taught community-based learning courses believe the following ten principles have been instrumental in the success of their classes.

1. CBL should aim--first and foremost--to offer an intellectually rich educational experience for students and address a community need.
2. The CBL project should be well-integrated into the course content, so that students clearly see the relationship between the project and the academic goals of the course. They should also be able to understand why the experience has intellectual value.
3. Adequate in-class time should be allocated for the students to share, discuss, and analyze their CBL experiences with other students in the class and with their professor.
4. The time commitment for completing the CBL project and students' reflection on it should be flexible, appropriate, and in the best interests of everyone involved: students, faculty, and community partner.
5. Structured opportunities for analysis should be incorporated into the course requirements so that students may reflect critically on their experiences.
6. Students should receive some instruction in how "to read experience as a text" so that they learn to isolate pivotal experiences and analyze their significance. It is important to remember that while most students have been schooled and are quite skilled in interpreting the written word, they are much less adept in understanding how to analyze experience.
7. Faculty should recognize that creating a viable CBL project with a community partner takes time, commitment, and an understanding of the partner's point of view.
8. The community partner should identify what the community needs, not the faculty member.
9. Collaborations between faculty and community partner are key to creating a CBL project that is both intellectually rich and provides a service to the community.
10. Final results of the CBL project should be shared by the students with the community partner. End-of-the-semester oral presentations have been especially useful in bringing everyone involved in the project together. It is also a good way to celebrate the project's completion.