Integrating Service Learning and Digital Technologies: Examining the Challenge and the Promise

Abstract

Our intent is to frame the integration of service learning and digital technologies broadly in teaching and learning and to explore some of the complexities of the challenge and the promise, thereby setting up readers’ engagement with the questions and issues that follow in the papers of RIED. We seek to provide perspectives that may contribute to subsequent implementation of pedagogical innovations and research that will improve practice and, in consequence, outcomes for all. We begin by offering an overview of the what’s and why’s of service learning. We then examine some of the how’s of service learning in the context of its integration with digital technologies. Finally, we explore several issues that may shape new developments at the interface of these two pedagogical innovation.

Keywords

• service learning
• digital technologies
• distance education
• civic education