For EASLHE service-learning is an experiential educational method that consists of engaging students in community service, reflecting critically on this experience, and learning from it personally, socially and academically. Such learning dynamics are thought to address human, social and environmental needs from the perspective of social justice and sustainable development, and aim at enriching learning and, concurrently fostering civic responsibility and strengthening communities. In practice, many benefits have been attributed to these pedagogical-didactic dynamics. But there have also been barriers and limitations to service-learning as a teaching method. The critics are around or include service-learning inability to address substantially structural issues, build authentic relationships with communities, assess learning, and meet community goals. More concretely, some people have been discussing the weaknesses of service-learning experiences regarding the lack of assessment, the fact of being more focused on the student over the community, race issues like white normativity, or others as logistical burdens on teachers, power inequalities, and “an inability to address structural issues while meeting community members’ goals”. In order to overcome these limitations or weaknesses, Udoewa (2022) presents an article regarding ‘Hybrid Expeditionary Service Learning’ as “a new service-learning model that employs an expeditionary learning design and embeds both the classes and service within learning expeditions”. The Hybrid Expeditionary Service-Learning (HESL) is a learning model that “reimagines and conjoins the service learning model and the expeditionary model”. HESL variations may be enhanced learning beyond the service-learning model alone. The variations seem to act as ‘one belt’ of lecturing (Expeditionary Learning), course structure (expeditions), reflections (expeditionary co-reflections) and expositions (service-based expositions). As Hybrid Expeditionary Service-Learning may be taken as a fresh input in the field of educational innovation, the purpose of these text lines is to let you know, as a reader, the work of Victor Udoewa, in case you do not know. By knowing his works we expect that you, as a service-learning provider, become more inspired in the design and creation of efficient dynamics and innovative service-learning porfolios.
V. Udoewa, (2022), “Hybrid Expeditionary Service Learning Model”, International Journal for Service Learning in Engineering, Humanitarian Engineering and Social Entrepreneurship, Vol. 17, No. 1, pp. 20-36.
