Service learning in geoscience education

Service learning (or community-based learning) is an educational approach that combines learning objectives with community service in order to provide a pragmatic, progressive learning experience while meeting societal needs. Students apply the structured knowledge and skills acquired in the academic course while developing a project that deals with a specific social problem while working in a team. In this article, characteristics of a good service learning syllabus and methods for student evaluation are discussed, the roles of students, teachers as well as external partners are described, and the benefits and challenges of this teaching method are listed for the field of geoscience education. Although this approach is more common in social studies curriculum, geosciences have a broad range of suitable topics, some of which are given as examples.