Overview

General Parameters

Suggested Projects

Process

Overview
In addition three final drafts from among the essays you write for the Portfolio Assignment, you also must include a final draft of writing you do for a Service-Learning Project.

I think that the writing you do for this project could take several different forms, and you will have opportunity to negotiate with me just what your project will entail, but I do have some general parameters for the project and some more specific suggestions for the shape of the project.  Finally, I lay out the process we'll follow for the project.

General Parameters
First, those general parameters:

1.  The writing you do for the project must be the equivalent of at least 4-8 pages of "finished" (final draft quality) writing.

2.  The writing needs to be prose and non-fiction.

3.  The writing has to incorporate analysis:  it has to demonstrate that the author had to analyze the rhetorical context of the writing she/he did for her/his service site or it has to include analysis as part of its purpose (I'll explain this more thoroughly in class.)

4.  The writing must be based on the 20 hours of service that you participate in this semester.  For MCSP students, this can be the 20 hours you use to meet your program commitment this term.  Those of you not enrolled in MCSP will also be required to perform 20 hours of community service by the date specified in the schedule. Please ask me if you have questions as to what qualifies as service.  For information regarding community service opportunities for University of Michigan students, check out the Edward Ginsberg Center for Community Service and Learning (http://www.umich.edu/~mserve/).
 

Here are my suggestions for the project:

1.  Use Keith Morton's criteria in "The Irony of Service" to evaluate your MCSP service experience.

2.  Analyze your service experience based on one or more of the course readings.

3  Compare and/or contrast your service experience this semester to prior service, using one or more course readings to provide a context (or contexts) for the comparison/contrast.

4.  A creative, non-fiction account of your service experience which consider issues raised in the course about community and service:  the nature of community, nature of service, questions of obligation, impact of diversity on service and/or community.

5.  Design your own project in consultation with the instructor.

You'll need to work on the Service-Learning Project throughout the term, and whether or not you choose to do option 2, I strongly suggest you keep a journal or diary or, at least, notes during your service experience.  These will prove to be an invaluable resource as you work on the project.

At several points during the term--see Course Schedule--we'll have project work days, where you'll have the opportunity to work on the project and discuss it with me and your peers.  I'll be asking you to write, during class time, a proposal for the project, and I'll give you feedback on the proposal.  We'll also have project peer conference and a student-instructor conference for the project.  Failure to meet the deadlines for the service learning project (unless there is some extremely good reason based on the nature of your project and not due to poor planning or procrastination) will lower your Attendance and Participation Grade  by 1/3rd to 2/3rds grade.