The Asian Tsunami Disaster Relief Consciousness and Fundraising experience allowed students a chance to grasp that countries, much like people, are different in terms of their initial wealth and property allocations. Correspondingly, their tradeoffs between policy choices are different. It is easy to identify a clear solution. For instance, there is general agreement on what needs to be done: send more money and people to help rebuild the countries affected by the tsunami disaster. However, the lack of communications, access, equipment, or technology can impede relief efforts. Students needed hands-on learning to fully recognize the complications that occur because of varied governement systems.
| ImplementationThe progress reports for each five-person group were monitored and graded. Each student in each group was responsible for chairing one of the tasks, and each student was required to report on how the elements he or she chaired affected the event. The groups completed a typed report that described the tasks fulfilled, explained which country or countries were targeted for the information dissemination and why that country was chosen, and notated their involvement in the collections drive, contact, and publicity of the targeted area. Additionally, each group turned in a final folder that included all of the progress reports plus a review and analysis of the event.
| Student PerformanceThe student notebooks included documentation for the entire project. Each group had five members, and the assignments over the semester numbered five, so some groups divided up the papers with a single person assigned to a certain paper. All the final papers, the reaction papers that each student had to write, looked good. Everyone came up with something to say when asked what did they learn.
| ReflectionsThe experience also had challenges that made it trying at times. I was surprised that some students objected to service-learning, apparently because they believed it would require them to do more work than a traditional lecture course. I was also surprised at the differences in support for service-learning from various university entities. There were more day-to-day stresses in incorporating service-learning than I had anticipated, but I think many of these are connected to the stresses that come from teaching any course that is substantially different for the first time.
| Summary