Learning the Language of Global Citizenship: Strengthening Service-Learning in TESOL

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CHAP TER 10

Building a Human Rights Curriculum to Support Digital Service-learning

Jennifer Maloy, Cheryl Comeau-Kirschner & Jean Amaral

ABSTRACT

In the web-based, service-learning project we describe, advanced ESL composition students at our community college researched and wrote about a variety of globally relevant human rights issues with the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a supporting text. We provide a detailed outline of the project and development of the Queensborough Community College Human Rights website, and describe the lasting impact that it had on fellow students. We also position this project within current scholarship on service-learning in ESL programs at community colleges and on digital storytelling in order to argue the need for more investigation on the effects and benefits of service-learning for students in such programs.

Keywords: English language learners, service-learning, digital storytelling, global learning, human rights.

INTRODUCTION

More than ever before in human history, we share a common destiny. We can master it only if we face it together. –Former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan

As the population of students in U.S. higher education grows increasingly diverse culturally as well as linguistically, how can educators working with the most vulnerable students within higher education—those placed in non-credit-bearing English as a Second Language (ESL) courses—rethink their pedagogies to allow students to articulate and critically examine stories that represent such diversity? In our chapter, we describe a web-based service-learning project in which ESL

Bui ld ing a Human Rights Curri cu lum 247

writing students at our college, Queensborough Community College (QCC), CUNY, researched and wrote about a variety of human rights issues with global relevance. We provide a detailed outline of the project by describing how students in each of our classrooms contributed individually and in groups as well as how the project impacted fellow students. We also position this project within current scholarship on service-learning in ESL programs at community colleges and on digital storytelling in order to argue the need for more investigation on the effects and benefits of digital service-learning for students in such programs.

In the service-learning project we describe, our advanced ESL composition students worked on various diversity and global learning assignments we created using the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a supporting text. The project culminated in the development of the QCC Human Rights website, which is accessible to all QCC students and has been used in subsequent semesters as an introduction to human rights curriculum. The website addresses human rights issues related to modern slavery, women’s rights, education, and economic justice. We argue that researching current global human rights stories not only helped our students to build a campus resource; students also were able to develop intercultural sensitivity. While students brought knowledge of their own cultures, they also began to compare and contrast common issues across communities and gained a sense of how global issues both unite and distinguish different nations and cultures.

Literature Review: Service-learning and English Language Learners

Over the past 20 years, scholars and practitioners across a wide variety of disciplines have argued the benefits of service-learning for students at all levels of higher education. While service-learning is conceived and implemented in a variety of ways, a basic definition of service-learning is a pedagogical approach in which students work in the community in order to promote experiential learning and civic engagement. Such work can involve one-time volunteering opportunities, semester-long assignments, and even multi-year projects, and students participating range from K-12 to graduate. While scholars such as Ellen Cushman (1996) have argued the importance of fostering reciprocal relationships between all participating students and the community partners with whom they collaborate, service-learning projects can run the risk of perpetuating social hierarchies and privileging the knowledge and experience of one group of participants over the other. Thus the community organization effectively becomes the served, which may (or may not) benefit from students coming into the

248 Learning the Language o f Global Ci t i zen sh ip

organization and performing a civic duty by volunteering or producing material the community organization is perceived to need (Heuser, 1999; Kraemer, 2005).

This dynamic between “server” and “served” seems to arise in part in a conception of service-learning as an activity between middle-class students familiar with the act of volunteering entering communities in which members are deemed underprivileged, lacking economic, educational, or cultural resources (Butin, 2010; Wylie, 2014). However, such a dynamic is complicated and challenged when students with diverse socio-economic, cultural, racial, educational, and/or linguistic backgrounds participate in service-learning, working with communities within which they may feel some sort of connection (Green, 2001; Traver, Katz, & Bradley, 2014; Wylie, 2014). The growing diversity of students participating in service-learning has raised questions about the assumptions inherent in the projects that some service-learning practitioners create, and it also has opened up new models for service-learning in a variety of educational settings and in collaboration with a wider variety of community organizations.

This expansion is evident as growing numbers of Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) practitioners have come to realize the value of service-learning pedagogy for English Language Learners (ELLs). Such projects may involve international service-learning in which students learning English outside of the United States or as international students within the United States perform service within local communities. Examples of this are Heuser’s project involving international students from Japan participating in weekend volunteer projects at a variety of community organizations outside of their college community as well as Kassabgy and El-Din’s (2013) work with native speakers of Arabic at the American University of Cairo. Another approach to implementing service-learning projects for ELLs involves the ELLs receiving tutoring or other support from native English speakers (NES) or from TESOL students. Such projects may involve college students using their knowledge of ELLs’ first languages to provide support, as in the project that Carney (2004) details in which college students studying Spanish tutor Spanish-speaking high school students enrolled in an ESL program. NES students also may use their knowledge of English in service-learning, as Fitzgerald (2009) details in a project in which Texas Tech University students from a variety of disciplines tutor ELLs at a community-based organization as the university students learn about multiculturalism. Another common service-learning model that exists in TESOL teacher training programs is one in which students of TESOL work with ELLs at local schools and community organizations to bolster their training and


participate in experiential learning opportunities (He & Prater, 2014; Rueckert, 2013).

All of these projects certainly demonstrate the potential service-learning presents for promoting cross-cultural experiences, appreciating language diversity, and providing students with opportunities to interact with communities outside of the language classroom. However, as Askildson, Kelly, and Mick (2013) argue in a recent article, very few published profiles of service-learning with ELLs position such students as the agents of service-learning, despite the evidence that ELLs who perform service-learning benefit from enhanced language acquisition (Bippus & Eslami, 2013; Hamstra, 2010; Steinke, 2009; Wurr, 2002) and intercultural awareness (Wurr, 2009) when participating in such projects. As the above service-learning models demonstrate, utilizing service-learning pedagogy for ELLs does not necessarily ensure that ELLs are performing a particular type of service; often ELLs end up as the receivers of a service performed by NES students. While this may indeed offer ELLs meaningful linguistic and cultural interactions with larger communities, it also has the potential to position them as subordinate to native English speakers, reinforcing rather than challenging a “server/served” dynamic.

Our goal in this chapter is to point here to project models, including our own, that position ELLs as agents of service-learning, as participants who bring valuable knowledge and experience to projects and who serve as integral partners of intercultural exchanges. We believe this is particularly important for ELLs enrolled in adult ESL programs and non-credit bearing ESL programs at community colleges to ensure that such students who participate in service-learning projects ultimately gain confidence as English speakers as well as members of the campus community. Glicker (2006) makes a similar argument in “Service-Learning for Academic Literacy in Adult ESL Programs,” outlining a project in which adult ESL students used the knowledge they gained about study skills to tutor other students. He claims

Adult ESL programs sometimes have a primary focus on developing basic reading and writing skills without a broader vision of the greater vocational and academic aims that the program may seek to achieve. However, when service-learning is integrated into adult ESL programs, students have a chance to develop a greater sense of agency and become more accountable as democratic participants in the dynamic interactions that help build society. As a result, service-learning programs can facilitate active student decision making and democratic participation in


the target language, English, and thus empower diverse communities on campus. (p. 40)

Glicker supports this tutoring project with in-class lessons in which students develop computer literacy as well as an awareness of various learning styles in preparation for tutoring, and he also offers reflection assignments to students in order for them to track their learning and engagement. The ultimate goal of this project is to encourage ELLs to stop seeing themselves as “workers” and instead as “producers of knowledge” (p. 45). Likewise, as Berman, Carroll, and Maloy (in press) argue, students in ESL and developmental writing programs at two-year colleges may be positioned institutionally in ways that do not encourage them to see themselves as full members of their college community. The authors claim this may be because students are required to take non-credit bearing courses and/or have a limited interaction with mainstreamed students. This is supported by Almon’s (2010) research on ELLs at community colleges, as she demonstrates that ELLs often struggle to navigate the U.S. college system; to balance school, family, and work; and to grapple with logistical and affective consequences of their ELL status. All of these factors, Almon finds, contribute to ELLs’ lack of engagement on college campuses as well as their significantly low graduation rate (13%). For this reason, we argue in this chapter that it is essential to ensure that ELLs who participate in service-learning projects are given roles in which they may emerge as equal partners in the project, bringing knowledge and experiences that contribute to the success of the project rather than merely participating in projects led or facilitated by NES or mainstreamed students.

While recent research has demonstrated the benefits of service-learning on community college students’ academic success and retention (Prentice, 2009, 2011), there is a dearth of scholarship on the effects of service-learning on ELLs at two-year colleges. Some articles that discuss service-learning involving ESL students at community colleges still position ESL students on the receiving end of the projects (Kincaid & Sotiriou, 2004; Phipps, 2006). However, other scholars present models in which ESL students provide a service to campus and community organizations. Elwell and Bean (2000) detail a project in which students in an intermediate ESL reading course participated in a campus food drive for migrant farm workers in local California communities. The students read work by John Steinbeck in order to gain a historical perspective on farming in local communities, and they also were assigned reflective writing and discussion topics in order to cross-culturally examine the experiences of farm workers in their home countries. The participating students became highly


invested in this project as they increased their reading, writing, and speaking abilities in English as well as their research and presentation skills. Levesque (2006) similarly attests to the benefits that service-learning provides ELLs in community colleges, citing eight years of research on the ESL program’s involvement in service-learning at his college. He argues that service-learning allows ELLs the space to deeply engage in “more significant communicative activities” and to gain confidence using English outside of the classroom (p. 27). Within the program, students are able to choose from a wide variety of community and campus organizations to work with, and their choices often seem to help them find a role in the community and support other immigrants and students in their community that could benefit from their knowledge and experience.

ESL Program Structure and the Role of Service-learning

As we set out to design and implement this project, we carefully considered not only the literature on service-learning in ESL programs at two-year colleges but also the unique structure and needs of our program to ensure the success of our project. Our community college is part of a large urban university system, the City University of New York (CUNY), which serves over 270,000 students across 24 colleges. Our college, QCC, is located in one of the most diverse counties in the United States, and our 16,000-plus students represent 143 countries and speak over 84 different languages. 38% of all students speak a language other than English at home, and 26% were born outside of the United States. 47% of 2013 freshman students have one remedial need, and 18% have two remedial needs. A total of 22% of freshman have a remedial need in reading, and 22% of freshman have a remedial need in writing (Office of Institutional Research and Assessment, 2014).

The Department of Academic Literacy serves a majority of students, those designated ELL and native English speakers (NES), who have demonstrated a remedial need in reading and/or writing. The department offers three levels of ESL writing courses and two levels of NES writing courses. In addition, we offer two respective levels of ESL and NES reading courses. All courses are non-credit bearing and required for students who are identified through Regents scores or CUNY-wide placement tests to need remediation in reading and/or writing. In order to exit these courses, students in the upper level reading and writing courses must pass CUNY-wide exit exams. The project that we describe in this chapter involves two upper-level ESL writing sections, one taught by Cheryl Comeau-Kirschner and one taught by Jennifer Maloy in the fall 2013 semester. Cheryl’s


section contained 24 students and Jennifer’s evening section contained 13 students. In addition to meeting the learning outcomes for this course, which focus on promoting critical thinking and writing, students were required to pass the CUNY Assessment Test in Writing (CATW) at the end of the semester to move on to a freshman composition course.

QCC has a deep commitment to High-Impact Educational Practices (HIPs), as defined by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U). Such practices include collaborative learning, common intellectual experiences, service and community-based learning, undergraduate research, writing-intensive courses, and learning communities and have been documented as promoting academic rigor, active learning, student-faculty interaction, and a supportive campus environment (AAC&U, 2014). QCC’s Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning supports HIPs across the campus through ongoing faculty development and programmatic support, and, in particular, our college is home to a thriving service-learning program, with 56 faculty members and 998 students in over 71 classes participating in service-learning in fall 2013 (“Looking Back,” 2014). In the past two years, our college community has pursued a new HIP, Diversity and Global Learning, through workshops and seminar series on campus. Likewise, the Department of Academic Literacy has committed itself to 100% of its faculty implementing a HIP in each section of reading and writing. We believe that using HIPs in ESL and developmental classrooms ultimately helps students to develop the types of critical analysis that are required of students on their exit exams, and, most importantly, engage students in meaningful academic inquiry and civic engagement. As an expression of this commitment, Cheryl and Jennifer designed this project to integrate multiple HIPs in a way that would highlight the diversity and strengths of our ELLs while supporting their development of critical thinking, reading, and writing. The human rights curriculum and digital service-learning project we describe below integrated a common intellectual experience, collaborative learning, diversity and global learning, and service-learning.

OVERVIEW OF THE PROJECT

This section of the chapter will discuss our integrated pedagogical approach to the service-learning project in our two upper-level ESL writing sections. It will describe our introduction to the thematic curriculum and project, coordinated instruction and assignments throughout the semester, and the library and digital storytelling components that enabled the students to develop the completed website.


The Beginning of the Project

The specific way we structured this project was by working with an on-campus community organization, the Common Read program, to produce a resource that would benefit students participating in the program in spring 2014. In the Common Read program, which meets the requirements for the AAC&U’s “Common Intellectual Experiences” high-impact program, students across the campus read a pre-selected, book-length text in a variety of courses and then attend and create events and workshops that connect to the themes in the text during a three-week period in the spring. The Common Read text chosen for spring 2014 had a human rights theme, and the coordinator of the program, Susan Madera, reached out to instructors to produce materials to supplement the text and to help students understand the key concepts and history of human rights from a multi-disciplinary perspective. Cheryl and Jennifer met with Susan to discuss ways in which the students in their fall 2013 courses could support the Common Read program by creating a resource for participating students. Susan expressed the need for students participating in the Common Read to have a solid foundation of human rights from a global perspective before the start of the program events and asked Cheryl and Jennifer to work with our students to design a digital resource that could be accessed by students and faculty. We considered possibilities for such a resource and then proposed a website that would provide an introduction to human rights to students and faculty.

During the initial weeks of the semester, both of our classes discussed, read, wrote, and reflected on defining human rights within a global, historical, and cultural context. We introduced the thematically based content via a free curriculum published by United for Human Rights that included Bringing Human Rights to Life teaching activities and student materials, and The Story of Human Rights DVD. It is an extensive curriculum, so we utilized those activities and materials that would help students to acquire a course-specific framework and vocabulary for the service-learning project. For example, we gave each student a Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) booklet to use a reference tool and watched portions of the DVD that addressed each of the 30 Articles in the UDHR.

Next, we introduced students to the service-learning aspect of the course. We connected the thematically based content to the campus-wide Common Read program, which was The Road of Lost Innocence by Somaly Mam (2008). It is a harrowing story of sex trafficking in Southeast Asia that charts Mam’s own journey from underage victim to renowned human rights activist. We explained to the students that they would read excerpts from this memoir and make


connections to human rights issues, violations, and in Mam’s case, heroic efforts to save others in a similar situation. The students’ knowledge about current human rights issues in a broad sense, and as related to the memoir, would then be utilized to develop a website for the larger campus community to use during the Common Read program in the following semester.

To that end, we also showed our students a popular web-hosting service named Weebly. We chose this free, user-friendly platform for its “Drag & Drop” features that our students could use to take responsibility for designing portions of the overall website and individual webpages, and most importantly, upload and showcase their digital stories.

Human Rights and Current Events

We scaffolded connections between human rights issues and current events in the following weeks. Scaffolded instruction is “the systematic sequencing of prompted content, materials, tasks, and teacher and peer support to optimize learning” (Dickson, Chard, & Simmons, 1993). It has been revealed in recent research in ESL pedagogical scholarship to be effective in supporting critical reading (Macknish, 2011) and writing, particularly when online collaboration and digital platforms are used (Hussin, 2008; Murray & McPherson, 2006; Vinogradova, 2011). To that end, we heavily scaffolded instruction and assignments by providing students with recent commentaries and/or exposés of human rights violations in a variety of countries and teacher-created questions. Students read those pieces, found main ideas and major details, and learned how to write summaries of the text. Then, students referred to their UDHR booklet to match one or more Article to the human rights violation. On many occasions, listening to and analyzing CNN and/or NPR reports supplemented our class discussions.

Each instructor measured student progress in summary writing based on The MTEL Summary Scoring Rubric, which was developed by Department of Education of Massachusetts and Pearson Education. The Department of Academic Literacy utilizes this rubric to assess summary writing in all of its reading courses, and many writing instructors also use it to assist their students with the summary writing portion of the CATW exam. The rubric consists of a four-point scale: A score of one represents the lowest level of ability, and it is not a passing score; a score of two is much closer to a passing score; a score of three is a passing score; and finally, a score of four greatly exceeds a passing level. Each score on the four-point scale reveals the extent to which the student understood the main idea(s) of the text, how well the student organized his or her


own ideas, the degree to which the student used his or her own words, and how clearly the summary was written. Initially, many students’ summaries achieved scores at the lower end of the scale, but those scores moved up the scale with repeated, scaffolded practice.

The goal in designing activities within students’ zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978) was to introduce students to human rights with structured writing assignments and templates that supported critical reading and making connections across texts. As students became more familiar and comfortable enacting such analysis, we slowly eliminated such structures and encouraged students to design their own models for critical response. As the students’ perceived self-efficacy (Bandura, 1997) related to reading and writing about human rights issues increased, we reduced scaffolding of assignments. Now, individual students searched for their own human rights commentaries and/or exposés based on their own interests and previous knowledge, and summarized, discussed, and created questions for them. They gave us the reading, summary, and questions, and we chose several of the “best” commentaries or exposés, summaries, and questions for whole group use. Often, we worked with individual students to revise the summaries and questions before presenting the materials to the whole group, which helped them to become more adept at thinking and writing about human rights issues. Eventually, we had individual students present their work to a small group. The small group chose the best pieces, and worked together to revise summaries and questions. Finally, we reviewed each group’s submission, and asked the whole group to vote on the ones they wanted to use for writing assignments.

Over time, the students had voted to use several texts that dealt with similar human rights issues, and those texts provided opportunities for cross-analysis. Students learned how to analyze the authority and veracity of print and/or online sources; consider multiple perspectives among the human rights violators and victims, and in turn, how specific groups were affected in similar and/or dissimilar ways; and finally, the larger societal ramifications that emanated from upholding or violating a particular human right. By examining myriad causes/effects, comparisons/contrasts, and problem/solutions, students developed deeper critical thinking and writing skills about those issues. Such deeper analysis enabled students to move from paragraphs to essays that were similarly structured to the CATW, which is a timed exam that all our students must pass to exit remediation. The CATW includes two parts: One part is a 250-300 word 10th-12th grade level reading passage, and the second part prompts students to summarize


the text and respond to significant idea(s) by handwriting a well-developed, multi-paragraph essay.

After collecting essays from students, we introduced the CATW Analytic Scoring Rubric to them. We discussed the scoring domains of the rubric and informed students that their essays would be scored based on the parameters of those domains. The rubric assesses student writing in the five following areas:

1. Critical Response to the Writing Task and the Test: This category

focuses on whether students understand the main ideas in the text and understand the nature of the writing task, which is to discuss these ideas and to critically analyze and integrate them with their own ideas and experiences.

2. Development of the Writer’s Ideas: This category assesses the students’ ability to develop their ideas through summary, narrative, and/or problem/solution. Students are expected to support statements with details and examples from what they have experienced, read, or learned about. Lastly, students must also refer to specific ideas from the reading to support their ideas.

3. Structure of the Response: This category focuses on students’ ability to express ideas that connect to a central focus or thesis and to use an organizational structure and transitions that help to support the thesis.

4. Language Use (Sentences and Word Choice): This category focuses on students’ clarity and sentence control.

5. Language Use (Grammar, Usage, and Mechanics): This category focuses on students’ ability to follow conventions of Standard American English.

As we did in the beginning of the semester, we provided human rights readings and writing prompts to the whole group. Students worked on and revised multiple essay drafts with a combination of instructor feedback via the CATW Analytic Scoring Rubric and peer review. Such review consisted of student pairs trading and reading essays and answering questions that we closely aligned to the scoring domains 1, 2, and 3 in the rubric.

Over the course of semester, the majority of students produced several well-written essay assignments and achieved competence in using the CATW Analytic Scoring Rubric. This competence became evident as we continued to score student essays and during peer review activities. For instance, students became increasingly competent in identifying to what extent each other’s essays incorporated components of the scoring domains; deciding whether an essay was


“passing” or “failing” according to the parameters of the rubric; and on certain occasions, even scoring each other’s essays with a comparative level of accuracy.

Toward the latter part of the semester, we decided to reduce the level of scaffolding so that small groups of students would choose their own human rights topic of interest for the final project. The final writing assignment, which would ultimately be uploaded to the student-created QCC human rights website, included the following collaborative parts: the research-based group report, a PowerPoint presentation, and a fully designed webpage to be shared with the whole class and larger QCC community. We worked closely with Library Liaison Jean Amaral for assistance with the research-based portion of the final project.

The Library Component

Developing a partnership with the Library Liaison to the Academic Literacy department and service-learning courses was an integral component of the human rights curriculum. Jean worked closely with both faculty and students, designing assignment-specific web-based resources and classroom instruction activities targeted to developing students’ information literacy skills. The course assignments required that students locate, evaluate, and incorporate secondary sources (e.g., magazine and newspaper articles) and media into their projects, while respecting ethical and legal issues in information use. All of these skills will be required of students as they progress through their college careers. Research studies have demonstrated the importance of developing the academic literacy and information literacy of ELLs in order to promote student engagement and persistence (Curry, 2004; Murie, Collins, & Detzner, 2004) and specifically identify the importance of libraries in this endeavor, noting that ELLs “frequently need instruction in the foundational practices that support academic writing,” including “using library resources, creating bibliographies, and avoiding plagiarism” (Curry, 2004, p. 57). Jean focused on these three topics when developing the course website and providing instruction, with the goal of establishing an information literacy foundation for students when taking future credit-bearing courses.

The library website created for the students provided resources targeted to the assignments for the course, and included sections on citing sources, MLA style, library databases, and finding and ethically using media. This web-based research guide was accessible to students both on and off campus as they worked on their assignments throughout the semester. Materials available on the website included explanatory text, videos, handouts, and links to library databases and other resources directly related to class assignments. Pedagogical research


indicates that this type of assignment-level, point-of-need instruction is more effective than generic library instruction (Miller, 2014; Strutin, 2008).

During the library instruction session, Jean used the website as a lesson plan, with students engaging in group exercises and hands-on activities associated with each section of the research guide. In covering citing sources, students participated in a think-pair-share exercise for which they answered the question, “Why do we cite other’s material when used in our own work?” During the share portion of this exercise, the class together identified all of the reasons students are required to cite their sources, reinforcing the information provided on this section of the website. This particular lesson was especially important as students publicly presented their work on the project website, which required diligent attention to giving credit for the articles and photos used.

The second activity in the instruction session focused on locating appropriate articles, beginning with a discussion and demonstration of what information is included in library databases (versus Google) and how to use database features (e.g., limiters) to target a search. Students then engaged in hands-on searching, each leaving the class with at least one article that could be used for their assignment. This introduction to library databases provided a foundation for future college-level courses which require incorporating primary and secondary sources in essays, speeches, and other assignments.

The last activity in the library instruction session involved locating legally usable photographs to incorporate on the project website and in student slide presentations. Many students erroneously believe that any image found on the web can be used in their academic work (Bridges & Edmunson-Morton, 2011). While it may be possible to make a fair use argument when students’ work is presented in class or in a password-protected learning management system, fair use would be unlikely to cover students’ work when presented on a public website, as their human rights project entailed. In the library instruction session, students were introduced to copyright, public domain material, and creative commons licensing, which allows creators of works to give permission for use. After a demonstration of the usage rights limiter in Google’s image search, which can be used to locate material “labeled for reuse,” students searched for photos for their projects. Similar to the database instruction, this information will be applicable in other college courses which require presentations and use of visual materials.

The web-based research guide and targeted instruction was not only important for the students in completing their assignments, but the materials and activities also engaged the students in the same forms of undergraduate research


activities as those provided to students in credit-bearing courses. Developing academic and information literacy in ELLs in this way has the potential to contribute to their future success (Patterson, 2011), similar to the effect of service-learning.

The QCC Human Rights Website

While some groups already had gathered secondary sources and photographs during the library workshop, other groups utilized Jean’s library website on their own. The research and writing stage of the project overlapped with the development of the QCC Human Rights website in a number of ways. Since the website would be used as a resource for all Common Read students and faculty in the next semester, our ELLs began to think more carefully about purpose and audience. That is, our students considered how the QCC Human Rights website would serve as an introduction to human rights issues such as modern slavery, women’s rights, education, and social justice yet still be connected to Somaly Mam’s memoir. They analyzed how the written product and visuals would go together to tell the story in a more insightful, or even sometimes, shocking way. For example, many students in Cheryl’s class debated over which images or quotes could better invoke strong emotions about the plight of the human rights victim(s). Such debate provided abundant opportunities for those students to enhance their aural proficiency in addition to their reading and writing skills. In Jennifer’s class, students often discussed which example of human rights violations they researched would be most effective in educating other students. Some groups compromised in a way that promoted cross-cultural engagement, as in the group that compared and contrasted educational opportunities of young girls in China and Bangladesh. Other groups were able to form a consensus among members, as was the case with a group of students who researched Brown vs. the Board of Education and discussed the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement as well as current forms of economic and racial segregation that still exist in the United States.

Ultimately, such discussions led to careful consideration of webpage design too. After students uploaded their essays, still images, and/or PowerPoint presentations, we showed them how to edit Weebly pages via the “Drop & Drag” features. Small groups of students chose and changed designs, colors, fading, animation, etc. until they felt satisfied with the resulting webpage. When small groups presented their final product to the whole group, it served as a thought-provoking, creative showcase for their work.


The Service-learning Product

In spring 2014, the website our classes created was presented as supplemental curriculum available to all faculty and students participating in the Common Read. It was included in a digital library guide created for the Common Read Spring 2014 and was linked to the informational website for the Common Read. While faculty members incorporated this resource into their spring 2014 curriculum in a variety of ways, Cheryl and Jennifer also used the website and its curriculum in our spring 2014 courses. In Cheryl’s class, her native English-speaking developmental writing students used the website essays as models for their own human rights-themed assignments, especially during their initial drafting and revision process. Jennifer used this text in both her first-year composition class and her developmental writing class, asking students to watch embedded human rights videos and to use the links listed on the website to conduct their own research. In her developmental writing class, Jennifer asked her students to read the student-written texts that the ELLs wrote for the website and to use those texts in their own research-based essays on human rights. Thus, students from Cheryl and Jennifer’s fall 2013 classes became authorities in Jennifer’s spring 2014 class as her developmental writing students, a combination or ELL and NES students, cited the student work in their own research papers.

DIGITAL STORYTELLING AND ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS

We have argued here that students in our ESL writing classes successfully completed a service-learning project in which they were positioned as knowledgeable members of the QCC community who were able to educate their fellow students on human rights curriculum. However, we also want to stress the digital component of this project, both in the online research our ELLs conducted with the support of Jean in the library and the human rights stories our students were able to tell throughout the website they created. Teaching students to interpret and write about their own life stories or those of others is not a new concept, but digital storytelling has changed the landscape for such narratives. The popularity of digital storytelling has largely coincided with the proliferation of emerging technologies and shifting definitions of literacy skills. According to Yang and Wu (2012), our ever-changing “technology-suffused environment” (p. 339) provides students with access to a copious amount of information on mobile learning devices, online applications, and social media tools. Such an environment has also prompted many educators to seek out new ways to inculcate students with the skills they will need beyond the instructional setting. In that


vein, Robin (2008) believes that educators have embraced digital storytelling as creative work that helps students to achieve a combination of digital, global, technological, visual, and informational literacy skills.

Of these skills, a library workshop can be integral to developing students’ abilities with technology and information literacy in digital storytelling projects. While most community college students are adept at searching Google and interacting on social media sites, such as Facebook, many are not comfortable navigating new technological tools, such as library websites and databases (Hargittai & Hinnant, 2008; Hargittai, 2010). Library research promotes technological facility as students navigate multiple online venues and work with various document formats. As mentioned earlier, it is also especially important to guide students in the ethical and legal use of images and information in digital storytelling, which calls on students to remix media in creating their stories. Remix culture is prevalent in the 21st century and often pushes the boundaries of copyright law (Lessig, 2008). Acknowledging and exploring this culture in the context of digital storytelling encourages students as creators to consider and make informed decisions about attribution and credit (Ahn et al., 2012). While students’ digital stories may take many different forms, attention to remix practices, copyright, and the ethical use of information and images remains an important topic.

Akin to service-learning, there are many ways to conceive and implement digital storytelling projects. Bran (2010) provides a basic definition of a digital story as one that contains traditional narrative elements matched with still images, oral and/or written text, and possibly, music or other animation effects. Digital stories may take different forms and serve different purposes in the classroom. The most common types of digital storytelling projects are the following: personal narratives, in which students share experiences based on meaningful life events; informational or instructional stories, in which students present instructional material in varied content areas; and historical event stories, in which students recount events from history (Robin, 2008). Lastly, Lambert (2010) believes that digital stories also have “emotional resonance” (p. 12) that empowers students to think deeply about and reflect on the meaning of their story; thus, students become responsible for how they want to convey their story to the audience via choices about voice, focus, and pacing of each element.

While many scholars and educators have embraced the advantages of digital storytelling, there is scant research that focuses on the effects of such projects on ELLs at two-year colleges. Still, recent scholarship has reported important benefits of digital storytelling for those students. Reinders (2011) believes that


digital storytelling enables ESL students to tell even richer stories; promotes team work, collaboration and interpersonal skills; and provides more avenues for feedback after online posting. Perhaps among the most demonstrable benefits include ELL engagement (Barrett, 2005; Bran, 2010; Hofer & Swan, 2006) and language learning (Iannotti, 2005; Santos-Green, 2013; Sepp & Bandi-Rao, 2015). Hur and Suh (2012) believe that digital storytelling changes the nature of ELL engagement because they “change from passive information receivers to active knowledge developers” (p. 324). Aside from being active knowledge creators, Bran (2010) claims that ELLs’ emotional attachment to the content of their digital story also promotes more involvement in their projects. One example of this is Iannotti’s (2005) description of a digital storytelling project in her ESL class. She encouraged students to experiment with various multimodal capabilities as they crafted their personal experience digital stories, and she felt that their “level of learner autonomy rose as we approached the finish line…this took place in the context and voice of the personal” (p. 11). Lastly, the multiple modalities of such a project can deepen ELLs’ reflection on their learning (Barrett, 2005).

Furthermore, some instructors have noted that digital storytelling greatly bolstered ELL language learning. Iannotti felt that her ELLs improved in “discrete sounds, word stress, sentential stress, and intonation” (2005, p. 11). While Sepp and Bandi-Rao’s (2015) ELL writing students’ reflected on the challenge to “speak audibly, and with the right rhythm and pacing” during their narration, the instructors believed that this challenge was actually an advantage of the digital storytelling project because “it forced students to recognize their weaknesses in this area and push themselves to improve” (p. 82). These small-scale projects are indicative of scholarship on the connections between English language learning and technology. Healey et al., (2011) posits that ELLs should “effectively use and critically evaluate technology-based tools as aids in the development of their language learning competence as part of formal instruction and for further learning” (p. 1). Recent research shows that digitizing storytelling can enhance ELLs’ contextualized language development (Reyes-Torres, Pich & Garcia, 2012; Yang, 2012; Yang & Wu, 2012).

In addition to scholarship that supports digital storytelling with ELLs, Perren, Grove, and Thornton (2013) describe one service-learning project that incorporated digital literacy with positive learner outcomes. Students created newsletters and brochures about their service and civic engagement in a service-learning class in the ESL program, and those written products were published on the Internet. This project provided opportunities not only for language learning


and digital literacy skills, but also teamwork, ownership, and “fostered the concept of audience awareness by demonstrating to the students the possibility of further global collaboration by sharing their publication with the world” (p. 470).

Much like the project Perren et al. (2013) described, our students achieved similar goals and learner outcomes. The digital component of this project also provided numerous opportunities for language learning, teamwork, and ownership of the written products and corresponding design of those products. Moreover, as our students acquired more audience awareness about how those final products would be utilized outside of the classroom, they were better able to educate their fellow QCC students on human rights curriculum. Because students were able to display their work using an online platform, the website consisted of multiple perspectives on human rights from each student group, and it also presented stories from a variety of countries throughout the world, including an examination of worker’s rights in China, a critique of Guantanamo and the treatment of detainees by the United States government, and stories of women living in Afghanistan. Cheryl and Jennifer witnessed and reflected on the benefits of the digital component of the project throughout the semester, and students offered their own reflections of this experience upon the completion of the project.

STUDENT REFLECTIONS ON THE PROJECT

All participating students in both Cheryl and Jennifer’s sections of ESL writing completed a reflective survey on their service-learning project at the end of the semester. The survey is distributed by the Office of Academic Service-Learning each semester to all classes who participate in service-learning at QCC. The office provides each instructor with her class’s individual results. In a preliminary section of the survey, students are asked about their gender, ethnicity, and age. In Cheryl’s section, 24 students responded to the survey: 58% of her students identified as male and 42% as female; the average age of respondents was 24.9; and 65% of her students identified as Asian, 18% as Black/African-American, 13% as Hispanic/Latino, and 4% White. In Jennifer’s section, 10 students responded to the survey: 20% of students identified as male and 80% as female; the average age of respondents was 24.9; and 60% of her students identified as Asian, 10% as Black/African-American, 10% as two or more races, and 20% did not respond when asked this question on an end-of-semester survey.

While the specific results of the surveys differed across Cheryl and Jennifer’s sections, a majority of students responded positively to questions about their service-learning experience. A five-level Likert scale was used in each question,


and the Office of Academic Service-Learning classified responses in the top two levels of the scale as positive. Overall, 79% of Cheryl’s students and 100% of Jennifer’s students responded that they would rate the overall experience of their service-learning class positively. In Cheryl’s class, 75% of respondents responded positively to the survey statements “As a result of participating in this service-learning project, I have a good understanding of the needs and problems facing society” and “I have a good understanding of the community need my service-learning project addressed.” Students in Cheryl’s class also contributed written comments in their surveys that reveal the benefits they received from participating in a project with a global focus. Students pointed to the knowledge they gained about human rights and specific violations in multiple countries, including the United States. Six students stated that the project helped them to interact with and learn from other students. As one student writes, the project “is a good opportunity to give my ideas and listen and learn from other people with different culture. Also, it’s a good opportunity to see how I can behave in a group of people and work in a team.”

Likewise, Jennifer’s students also provided positive feedback on the project in terms of it allowing students to work together and learn about new cultures. 90% of respondents in Jennifer’s class said the project helped them to work with others as a member of a team, and, likewise, 90% also responded positively to the statements that the project helped them to respect the opinions of others who do not agree with them; understand the values of people different from themselves; and analyze and critically evaluate ideas, arguments, and points of view. 80% of students claimed that the project helped them to communicate with people of different backgrounds or cultures. Jennifer’s students also responded quite strongly that this project prepared them academically in addition to providing them with opportunities to develop cultural awareness, with 90% stating that this project allowed them the opportunity to express ideas, opinions, and facts verbally and in writing, and with 80% stating “The service-learning project helped me to learn material from my course more effectively.”

Students offered similar positive comments in a learning reflection completed at the end of the library research workshop. The learning reflection asked students about what they had learned in the session and the usefulness of the material covered. All 32 students who completed the learning reflection stated that they had learned at least two of three topics covered in the lesson (citing sources, finding relevant material in library databases, finding legally usable images). All students also agreed that the workshop content would be useful in their coursework, with 63% strongly agreeing and 37% agreeing. Students


commented on the importance of the information they learned and reported that the information would help them in the future. Other comments included that one library class would not be enough and that there should be “more opportunities to come over again” to the library. Another student suggested the library session “should be compulsory for everyone.”

While such survey results as those from both the courses and library session are limited by the self-reported nature of the data (Porter, 2011), they do highlight some of the benefits of this digital service-learning project for ELLs. Students revealed in their responses that such a project provided them with an opportunity to engage with multiple sources and viewpoints to produce authentic academic inquiries supported by research, to work collaboratively on a digitally-based writing assignment, and to develop intercultural awareness. While the ethnic, racial, gender and age diversity in our classes certainly ensured that students learn from people whose cultural perspectives differed from their own, students likewise engaged in cross-cultural perspectives because of the global nature of the courses’ human rights curriculum. Students brought their own cultural perspectives to the project; however, the cross-cultural conversations that studying human rights demanded ultimately necessitated that students explore viewpoints beyond their own to collaborate. Students had to negotiate which human right they wanted to explore as a group, which specific human rights violation they would explore, and what their views of this violation were and how such views were informed by their own cultural identity and ideology.

INSTRUCTOR REFLECTIONS ON THE PROJECT

While Cheryl and Jennifer worked closely with Jean to design a project that highlighted our ELLs’ multiple literacies and cultural perspectives, we do recognize certain limitations in this project. First and foremost was our struggle to integrate numerous high impact practices into a one-semester class in which students also were required to take a high-stakes exam. While Cheryl and Jennifer worked to link all of students’ research and writing assignments to the CATW, the standardized writing exam all students took at the end of the semester, it was difficult at times to make connections explicit enough for students. We took a good deal of time explaining how writing and critical thinking tasks such as summary, analysis of sources, and finding textual evidence to support an argument were integral parts of both the CATW as well as the digital service-learning project. In addition, we encouraged students to consider cross-cultural perspectives when practicing for the CATW just as they did when writing about


human rights. However, implementing all of the components of our project while simultaneously preparing students for their exam remained a challenge.

Such practical realities may be one reason why scholarship on service-learning, library research, and digital storytelling with ELLs at community colleges and in adult ESL programs may be limited. Despite the diverse perspectives and cultural knowledge ELLs bring to the classroom, the ambitious learning objectives, program requirements, and often limited resources of non-credit ESL writing courses may make implementing such complex projects a logistical and practical challenge. Even at a campus such as ours with a deep commitment to implementing high impact practices in ESL writing and reading courses, balancing a curriculum that promotes civic engagement and global learning with preparation for a writing exam that would determine whether students could exit remediation and begin taking credit-bearing freshman writing courses was a challenge that we did not take lightly. However, in the end, we believe that this digital service-learning project helped to prepare students for their exam while, more importantly, introducing them to the meaningful academic inquiry that we hope students will experience throughout their time in college.

CONCLUSION

Students’ engaged conversation and writing about human rights violations as well as their collaborative design of our human rights website resulted in the creation of a detailed digital resource for QCC students and faculty in classes with a human rights focus. The community for which this website was created is ultimately the campus community. A project such as this may challenge conceptions of service-learning being a project that takes college students off campus to support local communities. Instead, our project demonstrated how ELLs could support other students on campus. As we mention at the beginning of this chapter, ELLs enrolled in non-credit bearing courses on a college campus may feel marginalized and/or isolated on campus for a wide variety of reasons including the location of such programs, the status of students, or even the cultural isolation students may feel when they are placed into ESL writing and reading classes. We argue that projects such as ours position ELLs not only as those who serve a community but also position ELLs as respected members of a campus community who have knowledge to share with other community members.

Furthermore, the digital nature of the project encouraged our ELLs to view themselves as makers of knowledge who engaged and developed their academic, aural, and visual literacies as they created a resource that could be used not only


by fellow QCC students but also served as a document of our students’ abilities for themselves as well as to our campus community. Because students were required to collaborate on this project, and because they were encouraged to actively consider how they could best educate their audience on a variety of human rights issues, students were required to think critically—as well as cross-culturally—about quality of life issues that affect people across the globe.

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Documents

Learning the Language of Global Citizenship: Strengthening Service-Learning in TESOL