Service Learning Collaboratory

The Service Learning Collaboratory gives you the opportunity to explore and meet a community need as part of a cross-disciplinary team charged with completing a specific project.

Each term, the model is the same but the subjects and collaborators change to cover a variety of industries and disciplines. You can expect relatively little traditional lecture. Much of your learning occurs through interactions with peers, instructors, clients and expert guests. Your learning will be active, engaged, hands-on and real.

In the course catalog, the course number is SLCE 5001.

Are you ready for life after college? Do you have the digital and technical skills necessary to be successful in whatever you want to do? Do you want to engage in Service Learning and have a direct impact on people's lives?

• This class is for students from every kind of academic background.
• In this class you will combine your current knowledge and skills from your academic background with new digital skills to plan, design, develop, and launch a newly-imagined product or service that will support a non-profit partner.
• Learn by doing. We'll spend half of the semester learning important digital skills such as design thinking, project management, digital marketing, app development, and web development and how they are applied in businesses, non-profit organizations, and government today. Then we'll spend the rest of the semester re-imagining a product or service provided by our non-profit partner and help them develop and launch it.

Students worked on researching, designing, and implementing solutions to help adult learners prepare for a career in technology. Students learned new digital skills and explored leadership, teamwork, collaboration, social justice and social change.

Saturday Hoops in Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine neighborhood lets kids be kids: Every Saturday morning, kids come to play basketball, make arts and crafts, do yoga, and enjoy similar activities in the company of adult volunteers who serve as role models. In the fall 2018 course, students are working on a public relations and marketing campaign to bring more attention and volunteers to Saturday Hoops.

In spring 2018, the Service Learning Collaboratory paired FC Cincinnati soccer players and staff with University of Cincinnati students and faculty, along with students and teachers from Carson Elementary in Lower Price Hill to address issues related to bullying and youth engagement. Through the Pay It Forward Student Philanthropy Grant, the course received funding to support the relaunching near the school of a “futsol” court, a space where communities can explore how to "Rise Together.”

This concept originated in relationships with the Mayerson Foundation’s High School Service Learning Program and two local high schools – Riverview East and Madeira. In the class, UC students and faculty worked with high school students and faculty to create digital storytelling projects that highlighted each high school’s service learning efforts. The final projects were showcased at an end of year celebration to which stakeholders from all participating campuses were invited.