The use of community based learning in educating college students in Midwestern USA

Community-based learning (CBL) integrates service to the community with classroom learning in order to help students develop personal skills and a sense of civic responsibility as well as academic skills. The current literature describes numerous benefits of CBL, yet it mostly employs qualitative methods and offers mostly anecdotal evidence. This study used survey data in order to provide qualitative assessment of the impact of CBL across multiple domains including: academics, critical thinking skills, communication ability, inter-personal skills, local and global citizenship, and intra-personal development. Age, gender, and year-in-school differences in student perceptions of CBL benefits are also analyzed and reported.