CBL Course Snapshots for the 2024-2025 Academic Year
Posted by hannah.nacu
Community-Based Learning (CBL) is a high-impact, culturally responsive pedagogy that empowers students as agents of social change. It builds skills in collaboration, problem-solving, and leadership by linking classroom learning to real-world issues and lived experience.
For faculty, CBL fosters innovation, reflective teaching, and meaningful community engagement. It draws on student creativity and civic passion while grounding course design in equity and relevance.
As educators, CBL helps us connect academic content to the social realities that shape our students’ lives and communities.
Fall 2024
This slide deck (viewable to PCC) includes CBL snapshots of an array of student engagement experiences in Fall 2024, facilitated by instructors in Environmental Studies, Biology, English for Speakers of Other Languages, Multimedia, and Sociology, in collaboration with a wide variety of local community partners. As quotes from student reflections attest, students are eager to make a difference in their communities and enthusiastic about putting course content in action, and these real-world applications, using multiple modes of learning, have transformative effects on student learning, civic participation and future goals.?
“This project and the process was fun and interesting, I definitely learned a lot and I feel like not a lot of people know about certain issues that are going on in the world. I’m very thankful for this opportunity, it opened my eyes and made me realize that we need to start acting now and find ways to stay prepared for what’s coming.““I think that this may be the most interesting and definitely most fun assignment in this class. It was really fun to go back to some of my family’s roots to try and find a species of plant that really does mean the most to us and the way I did this was by getting to talk with my father who is from Mexico and absolutely loves the plants from there but one ended up being the most nostalgic to him, was of course the pitayas that grew from cactuses which is of course what I had to make my project about.”
“I am using my voice & actions to directly impact our state for good. …to bring awareness to issues I am passionate about.”“…the opportunity to learn about earthquake preparedness while engaging with the community is invaluable.”
Experience Community-Based Learning at PCC
Courses with community-based learning (CBL) provide students with the opportunity to: explore?local, national, and/or global issues;?broaden their?perspectives and enhance?critical thinking skills; and become active citizens through community engagement.?There are numerous courses that have CBL?projects every?term!