Community-Engaged Teaching and Learning

Community-Engaged Teaching and Learning

Reflection Question

If you could provide your students with opportunities to engage with activities that make a real-world impact, what form would those opportunities take, and how would you get started?

What is Community-Engaged Teaching and Learning?

Community-engaged teaching and learning (CETL) is a pedagogical approach that engages faculty, students, and community partners in mutually beneficial and respectful collaborations that address community-identified needs, deepen students’ civic and academic learning, and contribute to the scholarly mission of the institution (adapted from the Carnegie Elective Classification for Community Engagement, 2026). 

Different disciplines and institutions use different terms for this work — service-learning, community-based learning, curricular engagement, and more.

"CU Boulder uses community-engaged teaching and learning as a broad term for academic experiences in which students learn by doing and critically reflecting in the context of a community partnership."
Community-Engaged Teaching and Learning

Community-Engaged Teaching and Learning Comprises Three Distinct but Interrelated Components:

Community-Engaged Teaching and Learning
  • Partnered engagement: Course projects or assignments are connected to the work of external community partners, often extending beyond the classroom into community settings. 
  • Critical reflection: Students engage in structured opportunities to examine the relationship between academic learning and real-world experience, with the goals of deepening content knowledge and exploring questions of perspective, agency, and social responsibility. 
  • Community responsiveness: The work generates something of genuine use to the community partner or broader public while meeting course requirements and deepening student learning.  

These components can be combined in many ways. Community-engaged teaching and learning exist on a spectrum. Where your course falls depends on your learning goals, your disciplinary context, and what the community actually needs. The table demonstrates the community-engaged teaching and learning spectrum based on the degree of community partner involvement in the course. 

TO 

FOR 

WITH 

Students produce scholarly work for broad public audiences 

Students apply course knowledge to address a specific community need or problem 

Students and community partners jointly define the work and share in its outcomes 

Write policy briefs or white papers 

Conduct community-based research, creative work, or teaching work 

Design research questions with community co-investigators 

Develop educational or advocacy materials 

Complete needs or asset assessments 

Co-design programs, tools, or curricula with partners 

Produce translational science for non-specialist audiences 

Deliver direct service 

Engage in participatory action research 

Create public-facing media, journalism, or creative work 

Consult with organizations on defined projects 

Develop and test solutions alongside community stakeholders 

What distinguishes community-engaged teaching and learning from other forms of experiential learning is that a mutually beneficial community partnership is central to the course design, and structured critical reflection transforms community experience into academic and civic learning. 

Benefits

  • Community-engaged teaching and learning is associated with deeper application of course content, stronger critical thinking, and gains in academic performance. A meta-analysis of 62 studies found significant positive effects across five outcome domains with effect sizes ranging from 0.27 to 0.43 (Celio et al., 2011). 
  • A 2025 meta-analysis specifically examining community-engaged teaching and learning and student thriving in higher education found positive effects across academic, personal, social, and citizenship outcome domains — the most comprehensive synthesis of the evidence to date (Guanlao et al., 2025). 
  • Community-engaged teaching and learning has been positively linked to student retention and persistence, with community-engaged coursework showing stronger effects on re-enrollment than students’ entering characteristics including race, gender, and age (Reed et al., 2015). 
  • A 2022 systematic meta-analysis found that community-engaged teaching and learning produced significant gains in empathy, with direct community interaction identified as the key driver — an outcome with documented downstream effects on professional practice and civic behavior (Gordon et al., 2022). 
  • Civic learning gains from community-engaged teaching and learning predict continued civic engagement years after graduation — volunteering, charitable giving, and community participation — while other academic learning gains do not (Lin et al., 2025). 
  • Community-engaged teaching and learning shows stronger positive effects for first-generation, low-income, and underrepresented students than for their more advantaged peers, making it one of the more equity-responsive pedagogies available (Finley & McNair, 2013). 
Community-Engaged Teaching and Learning

Partners in well-designed community-engaged teaching and learning courses gain: 

  • Organizational capacity through student research, analysis, or direct service that advances work they couldn't otherwise resource (Sandy & Holland, 2006) 
  • Knowledge legitimation — Amplifies community expertise alongside scholarly expertise (London et al., 2022) 
  • Civic mentorship — A role in shaping how the next generation understands the issues community partners address (Sandy & Holland, 2006) 
  • Sustained university relationships that create ongoing access to faculty expertise and student cohorts (Karasik, 2020) 

These benefits are most consistently realized through partnerships that are sustained, built around community-identified priorities, and supported by faculty who stay actively engaged (Karasik, 2020).  

Community-Engaged Teaching and Learning

Faculty who teach community-engaged teaching and learning courses report: 

  • Work that aligns with your values — Faculty report that community-engaged teaching and learning allows them to bring their personal commitments into their scholarly roles, producing high intrinsic motivation and a heightened sense of competence (Compare et al., 2024) 
  • More relevant and energized scholarship — Community partnerships generate new research questions, keep disciplinary work grounded in live problems and create collaborations that extend beyond any single course (Bloomgarden & O'Meara, 2007) 
  • An integrated scholarly identity — Community-engaged teaching and learning allows teaching, research and service to reinforce rather than compete with each other, with community work informing research questions and research enriching what happens in the classroom (Pearl et al., 2025) 
  • A richer professional community — Faculty engaged in community-engaged teaching and learning report stronger connections with colleagues, community partners and networks that extend well beyond their home institution (Compare et al., 2024) 
Community-Engaged Teaching and Learning

What It Looks Like in Practice

TO — Public-Facing Scholarship

Students produce work intended for broad public audiences, often without a specific organizational partner. 

[EXAMPLE 1 — PLACEHOLDER] 

[Course name, department, instructor] 

[Brief description of what students do, what they produce, and who it reaches.] 

 

FOR — Applied Community Work

Students apply course knowledge to address a specific community need or problem in collaboration with a partner. 

[EXAMPLE 2 — PLACEHOLDER] 

[Course name, department, instructor] 

[Brief description of what students do, what the partner receives, and how the work connects to course content.] 

[EXAMPLE 3 — PLACEHOLDER] 

[Course name, department, instructor] 

[Brief description.] 

WITH — Co-Created Work

Students and community partners jointly define the goals, questions, and methods from the start. 

[EXAMPLE 4 — PLACEHOLDER] 

[Course name, department, instructor] 

[Brief description of how the partnership was structured, what was co-designed, and what both parties gained.] 

These are a few examples from CU Boulder’s community engagement portfolio. 
Browse the full CU Boulder Public and Community-Engaged Scholarship Database for more. 

Getting Started

Professional Development 
  • Experiential Learning Design Accelerator — A cohort-based program supporting faculty in designing undergraduate courses with community-engaged partnerships. Includes a stipend for faculty ($2,000) and community partners ($1,000).  
Find a Community Partner 

Not sure where to start? Several campus resources can help connect faculty with community organizations: 

  • Community Perspectives Program — Each year the Public and Community-Engaged Scholarship brings cohorts of faculty to Rural Philanthropy Days conferences across rural Colorado, team where faculty learn directly from communities about their priorities, needs and partnership interests. This provides a rare opportunity to build relationships before a course ever takes shape. 
Funding 
Tools and Infrastructure (Coming Soon) 
  • Canvas modules   
  • CETL toolkit and micro-credential 

For faculty who want to go deeper into the research and practice of community-engaged teaching and learning course design: 

  • The Craft of Community-Engaged Teaching and Learning (Welch & Plaxton-Moore, 2019) — A practical guide covering course design, implementation, assessment, and promotion and tenure considerations. A free companion workbook is available for download. The most comprehensive single resource for faculty getting started. 
  • Elon Center for Engaged Learning — A research and practitioner hub focused on high-impact practices, including community-based learning. Offers open-access research syntheses, course design resources, and a seminar series for faculty. 
  • Annotated Bibliography — Public and Community-Engaged Scholarship has compiled a bibliography of foundational and current literature on community-engaged teaching and learning, organized by topic. 

CU Boulder is a member of two national organizations that support community-engaged scholarship and teaching. Faculty can access their resources, networks, and professional development opportunities directly: 

  • Campus Compact — A national coalition of colleges and universities committed to the public purposes of higher education, with resources on community-engaged pedagogy, partnership development, and civic learning. 
  • Engagement Scholarship Consortium — A network of research universities advancing the scholarship of engagement, with an annual conference and resources on community-engaged research and faculty development. 

International Association for Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement – A network that consolidates the value of service learning and community engagement across all engagement forms and educational levels. Individual membership rates are inexpensive.    

Annotated Bibliography

Guanlao, R., Pax, J., Wei, Y., & Zhang, W. (2025). A meta-analysis of community engaged learning and thriving in higher education. 

  • The most current and comprehensive synthesis of CEL outcome research. Covers academic, personal, social, and citizenship domains across a broad range of higher education contexts. The go-to citation for overall evidence of impact. 

Eyler, J., & Giles, D. E. (1999). Where's the Learning in Service-Learning? Jossey-Bass. 

  • The foundational empirical study. Drawing on surveys of over 1,500 students at 47 institutions, Eyler and Giles documented consistent positive effects across personal, civic, cognitive, and academic domains. Remains the bedrock citation for evidence-based claims about service-learning outcomes. 
  • A decade-long synthesis covering outcomes across students, faculty, community, and institution. Remains one of the most-cited reviews in the field and useful for making broad claims without overstating any single study. 
  • A rigorous meta-analysis of 62 studies finding significant positive effects across five outcomes: attitudes toward self, attitudes toward school and learning, civic engagement, social skills, and academic performance. Effect sizes ranged from 0.27 to 0.43. More methodologically careful than earlier reviews. 
  • A multi-institutional study following the 2009 freshman cohort at three Midwestern universities. Found that community service-learning had a stronger effect on re-enrollment than students’ entering characteristics. Good for making retention claims carefully. 
  • Found a significant small-to-moderate effect for empathy gains among service-learning participants compared to controls. Identified direct community interaction as the key driver. Valuable for health professions, education, and social science faculty in particular. 
  • A longitudinal study finding that civic learning gains — not other academic gains — predict post-graduation civic engagement including volunteering and charitable giving. Addresses the important question of whether CETL effects persist beyond the course. 
  • A national study of 38 institutions finding that as first-generation, low-income, and underrepresented minority students participated in high-impact practices including service-learning, outcome disparities between these students and their more advantaged peers were reduced. The key citation for equity arguments. 
  • One of the few studies centering the community partner voice. 99 experienced partners across eight California communities. Found partners are motivated by educating future professionals, gaining access to resources, and advancing their missions — not just receiving student labor. Essential reading before designing any partnership. 
  • Centers partner voices across 15 community-engaged research projects. Partners are motivated to validate community-based knowledge, gain research capacity, and address epistemic injustice — not just to access university resources. A more current and equity-oriented complement to Sandy & Holland. 
  • Boyer’s foundational articulation of engaged scholarship as a legitimate form of faculty work. Anchors the faculty benefit argument and connects CETL to broader conversations about what counts as scholarly activity. 
  • The strongest recent empirical study of what sustains faculty motivation in CETL over time. Grounded in self-determination theory; finds autonomy, competence, and relatedness as the core drivers. Useful for making the faculty benefit argument with current evidence rather than just Boyer. 
  • A 2025 descriptive analysis of how Carnegie-classified institutions — including CU Boulder — recognize community-engaged scholarship in faculty review. Directly relevant to faculty weighing the professional stakes of CETL. Growing but uneven recognition across departments and institutions. 

Kniffin, L. E., Clayton, P. H., Eatman, T. K., Jameson, J. K., & Moore, T. L. (2023). Community-engaged learning: Expanding definitions and advancing practice. Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement, 27(1), 201–220. 

  • The most current articulation of the CEL framework used in Patti Clayton’s workshop materials. Source of the updated definition and EUTT (Exploitative–Uni-directional–Transactional–Transformational) partnership continuum. The primary reference for the definitional framing used at CU Boulder. 
  • Bringle and Hatcher’s widely cited definition and implementation framework. Delineates activities across four constituencies: institution, faculty, students, and community. A foundational reference for defining the pedagogy and its intentional design requirements. 
  • Furco’s classic typology distinguishing service-learning from volunteerism, community service, internships, and field education. Useful for explaining to faculty what makes CETL distinct from less intentional forms of community involvement. 
  • Examines campus-community partnerships through relationship theory. Argues that the quality of relationships matters as much as the number of partnerships. Foundational for understanding what makes partnerships sustainable versus extractive. 
  • Develops the DEAL model (Describe, Examine, Articulate Learning) as a structured approach to reflection. Directly applicable to course design and essential for any treatment of CETL components. Reflection is what distinguishes CETL from volunteerism. 

Dostilio, L. D., Brackmann, S. M., Edwards, K. E., Harrison, B., Kliewer, B. W., & Clayton, P. H. (2012). Reciprocity: Saying what we mean and meaning what we say. Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, 19(1), 17–33. 

  • Directly relevant to the conceptual work in this document on what “reciprocity” actually means in practice. Distinguishes it from mutual benefit, transactional exchange, and co-creation. Useful for faculty who want to think carefully about the relational dimensions of their partnerships. 

Jacoby, B. (2015). Service-Learning Essentials: Questions, Answers, and Lessons Learned. Jossey-Bass. 

  • The most accessible and current practitioner guide for faculty new to CETL. Covers partnership development, course design, reflection, assessment, and common pitfalls. Readable for a faculty audience. The best single book recommendation for faculty getting started. 

Jacoby, B. (Ed.). (1996). Service-Learning in Higher Education: Concepts and Practices. Jossey-Bass. 

  • A standard reference for the range of CETL models. Covers direct service, indirect service, advocacy, and research-oriented models across disciplines and institutional types. 

Mitchell, T. D. (2008). Traditional vs. critical service-learning: Engaging the literature to differentiate two models. Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, 14(2), 50–65. 

  • Distinguishes traditional service-learning (focused on individual student development) from critical service-learning (focused on social change, working with rather than for communities, and analyzing root causes). Relevant to the democratic engagement framework in Patti Clayton’s materials. 

Clayton, P. H., Bringle, R. G., & Hatcher, J. A. (Eds.). (2013). Research on Service Learning: Conceptual Frameworks and Assessment (Vols. 1–2). Stylus. 

  • A comprehensive two-volume reference covering the research base across CETL models, including community-based participatory research, direct and indirect service, and advocacy. Particularly useful for research-intensive faculty. 
  • Develops the SOFAR framework (Students, Organizations, Faculty, Administrators, Residents) for analyzing partnership quality. Practitioners must be prepared to articulate goals to potential partners, know when relationships are mutually desirable, and communicate effectively with diverse audiences. Core framework in Patti Clayton’s workshop materials. 

Tinkler, A., Tinkler, B., Hausman, E., & Tufo-Strouse, G. (2014). Key elements of effective service-learning partnerships from the perspective of community partners. Partnerships: A Journal of Service-Learning and Civic Engagement, 5(2), 137–152. 

  • One of the more recent empirical studies of what community partners identify as making partnerships work: clear communication, student preparation, faculty visibility, and sustained commitment beyond a single semester. A current complement to Sandy & Holland (2006). 
  • (See entry in Section I.) Also belongs here: Sandy and Holland’s data has direct implications for how to initiate partnerships responsibly. Community partners’ perception of benefit was linked to the extent of their involvement in program planning and implementation. 
  • Identifies three types of service-learning partnerships — tentative, aligned, and committed — based on structural factors and closeness over time. Useful for helping faculty understand that different partnership models serve different purposes and require different levels of investment. 

Gelmon, S. B., Holland, B. A., Driscoll, A., Spring, A., & Kerrigan, S. (2001). Assessing Service-Learning and Civic Engagement: Principles and Techniques. Campus Compact. 

  • A practical guide to assessing community-engaged courses across four constituencies. Useful for faculty designing assessment strategies and for understanding what evidence of impact looks like in a CETL context. 

O’Meara, K., Eatman, T., & Petersen, S. (2015). Advancing engaged scholarship in promotion and tenure: A roadmap and call for reform. Liberal Education, 101(3). 

  • For faculty concerned about the professional stakes of community-engaged work. Maps the landscape of promotion and tenure reform and offers practical guidance. Particularly relevant for pre-tenure faculty considering whether CETL is worth the investment.