Make the City and Community Your Textbook
Community-based Learning
Community-based learning (CBL) courses incorporate at least 25 hours of meaningful community engagement with course content so you can get real-world experience as part of a for-credit class. This might look like volunteering, working on a project with a community partner, or a combination of both.
In these courses, students have a chance to learn from community partners and community experiences while also providing their own expertise and enthusiasm to community partners, resulting in a relationship where both students and community partners benefit.
Community engagement is built into the courses themselves, rather than being an “add-on” that students do outside of the course’s time requirements. The community engagement also relates directly to the course topic, which results in deeper and more enjoyable learning.
Example of CBL Courses
Journalism 445: Creative Campaign Messages
Students collaborate with a community partner on message development for advertising, public relations, and other strategic communications.
Educational Policy Studies 580: Participatory and Community-based Research and Evaluation
Students learn about goals, purposes, and methods associated with community-engaged, participatory research, and evaluation.
Landscape Architecture 373: Mindfulness in Restorative Environments
Students design and co-design restorative environments and features through a participatory planning process with community partners.
Find a CBL Course
More than 40 departments teach 110+ community-based learning courses every year. This is your chance to add hands-on, meaningful experience to your class schedule while getting involved in your community.
Curious on how to search for community-based learning courses on wisc.edu’s ‘course search and enroll’ tab? Click on the ‘Search for CBL Course’ video tab.
Community-based learning classes include at least 25 hours of service throughout the semester as part of the course requirement. Typically, you’ll begin by exploring the background of the issues related to the class and preparing to work with a community organization or agency.
Then you will usually spend a few hours a week at that community partner site or working on a project for a community partner, using your skills to provide real benefits to your community partner. During the course, you will learn from your community partners and experiences in the community, while also learning during class time.
The Morgridge Center offers transportation options to help community-based learning students get to and from their community partner sites.
The Morgridge Center is currently only providing transportation for courses that meet the UW guidelines for fieldwork AND receive approval from their department’s Dean.
If your course fits these criteria, please email the transportation intern for next steps.
Quickly find a community-based learning course to plan out your semester course schedule.
Assistant Director of Community-Engaged Scholarship Dave Lassen: dlassen@wisc.edu
Discover what CBL does for the Community and what it can do for You
Students report that in CBL classes, they learn more, understand course content better and enjoy the class more.
Some key takeaways include:
- Especially valuable for those who learn best through experience and teaching others
- Encourages retention of first-generation students and students of color
- Greater motivation to learn; deeper understanding of subject matter; integration of concepts from class to authentic issue
- Reduction of potential negative stereotyping; increase in cultural awareness
- Greater self-knowledge; increased awareness of community and social issues
- Enhanced interpersonal skills; improved leadership
Every university resides in a community. Whether a small town or large city, universities are surrounded by homes, businesses, schools, community centers, theaters–people’s lives. Collaborating with citizens in these spaces to help improve them has historically been one of the primary purposes of higher education in the United States, yet is one we often overlook today.
Community-engaged scholarship (CES) helps bridge this gap by fostering sustainable partnerships between university faculty, staff, and students with local citizens and organizations to address real community concerns. Sometimes called “service-learning,” community-based learning is a credit-bearing educational experience that integrates meaningful community service with guided reflection to enhance students’ understanding of course content as well as their sense of civic responsibility.
I definitely would recommend this course (ENVIRST600) to other students, especially if you’re interested in the topic of like heat or like environmental justice and social justice.
This class (EPS580) was very helpful in not only in discussing readings on different ideologies and how to do community-based participatory research, but also being able to put that into practice throughout the semester was really helpful.
In this class (JOURN445), we even got to travel up to Sheboygan to work with people, hands-on, facet-to-face, in person. It’s been very cool in this class that we get to do real work that will go reach real people.