Service Leaning at the University of Chile

In 2012, the city of Paine in Chile, the University of Chile and the Center for Latin American Service Learning and Solidarity (CLAYSS) of Argentina jointly executed a cooperation mission with support from the Horizontal Cooperation Fund of the Inter-American Program on Education for Democratic Values and Practices. The mission’s objective was to promote the exchange of experiences among participating institutions and to create an institutionalized body to train future professionals from the University of Chile and students from vulnerable locations in civic and democratic values, through a Citizenship Education Pillar. Thanks to this mission, directors, professors, academic collaborators and assistants from the University of Chile and municipal schools in Paine received capacity-building.

As a result of this experience of cooperation, in 2012 a group of activities of Service Learning were carried out in the framework of the course Introduction to Public Administration Studies that the School of Government and Public Administration of the University of Chile offers. This course is offered to new students in the field of Public Administration. Its main objectives is to teach students the basic concepts that define “state” and “government”, and to offer them a panoramic vision of the future activities that they will have to execute as public officials.

The experience with Service Learning was geared towards achieving two essential objectives: getting students to know and be familiarized with the institutions that are part of the Chilean Public Administration, having in mind the most relevant functions that the various public bodies carry out to achieve political and social development; and learn about, and ideally acquire, some attitudes that are essential in public service, such as responsibility, efficiency in resources management, capacity to coordinate tasks with other groups, capacity to adequately disseminate the objectives of their activities and to value citizenship participation in public issues and the search for alternatives to solve them.

On the ground, the mission was implemented with the educational institution “Escuela Alemania”, located in a rural area near Santiago (Paine), which assists minors from low income families and that are socially at risk. The main problem that these minors face is the lack of opportunities to overcome their condition of poverty and marginalization. The work was organized as follows: students prepared a own project of their service, which was also focused on directly helping to minors in the institution, upon submission and approval of higher authorities of the college. This meant that students had to visit the institution on a regular basis to elaborate the policy and later implement and evaluate it. Throughout the entire process students received support and help of the institution’s authorities, as well as of the task coordinating team of Service Learning of the university integrated two students in the course. 

The University of Chile views this cooperation experience as fundamental to strengthen the process of curriculum modernization with a strong citizenship component in teaching practices, and where students become the main actors. Foundations have also been laid for Service Learning to be institutionalized in the curriculum of participating academic institutions. In the city of Pain, there is installed capacity to implement learning and service. For CLAYSS, this has been an important opportunity to learn more directly from its leaders about the projects developed by the University of Chile, know the process of institutionalization that is initiating and follow the capacity building and promotion of the topic.

Even though a more exhaustive evaluation of this experience is pending, we can be certain that this was a valuable experience in terms of student learning, as well as the high value that the students themselves had about ​​this. Students recognized these activities as a more innovative, agile and dynamic teaching methodology that generates a special interest given the course’s activities. High class attendance and on the ground activities are an indicator of the aforementioned.

Links related to this project.

• News piece published by La Tercera - 05/29/2012: International Experts in Education bring to Chile an innovative teaching methodology (Expertos internacionales en educación traen a Chile innovadora metodología de enseñanza).
• International Meeting of Learning and Service organized by the University of Chile.  
•  Latin American Center for Service-Learning (CLAAYS)