June 2015 – Civic Learning 2.0

There is an increasing interest in how universities engage with their communities and how they can work with partners, groups and individuals to undertake projects of mutual benefit. Despite this renewed focus on the role of Higher Education in society, engagement between university and local communities has a long history. In the UK, relationships between universities and communities have evolved along with the growth of student numbers and expectations on academics to share their learning. This article looks at what the motivation or drivers for universities to undertake such work are, or whether it is the role of higher education to deliver these activities at a time of great change in higher education. With increasing calls for university-community engagement that delivers mutual benefit, this article explores the idea of university-community engagement to consider which stakeholder, if any, is the beneficiary of such activity, arguing that too little is known about the outcomes for all parties to say if there is any benefit in university-community engagement at all. Continue reading “Public Engagement blog: University-Community Engagement: Who benefits?” →

Earlier this week, the DMU Square Mile office received raw data showing the impact of the work of De Montfort University’s paired-reading mentors at New College, Leicester. It’s a spreadsheet of numbers showing reading ages in August 2014 and reading ages in June 2015 for around sixty 11-12 year-olds (year 7/8). Each child has attempted to improve his or her reading by working with a DMU undergraduate or community volunteer by meeting on a weekly basis and reading together. Move pupils have improved. It almost sounds too easy… But this requires the will of the pupil to attend and the volunteer to give up his or her spare time to attend. This is a big, yet rewarding, commitment for the student. Read some of the DMU Square Mile volunteering experiences by students Janvi Pala, Sarah Clark and Jonathan Boreland. Some of the colour-coded data on the spread sheet is black – where the child did not engage in the project, others are red, where insufficient progress was made, but thankfully this data shows that in many cases the spreadsheet glows green – indicating good progress.

Continue reading “Public Engagement blog: Impact of volunteer reading mentors in schools” →

This blog:

I’m Mark Charlton, Associate Director of Public Engagement at De Montfort University, Leicester, United Kingdom. I’m passionate about universities using Service-Learning, community-based learning, civic learning, the scholarship of engagement, learning-linked volunteering and all the other ways we describe students sharing their skills and knowledge beyond the campus. I encourage all staff and students to embed the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals into their work. I also lead the United Nations Academic Impact Initiative Global Academic Hub for SDG 16 at DMU. I am a PhD Scholar, researching the impacts of civic engagement on students’ political participation.