Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Multi-week service learning project with a community-based partner organization or school arranged each semester. Related class work addresses community partnerships, health promotion, reciprocity, local control, sustainability, participatory research, and skills. Students with credit for HSCI 349 may not complete this course for credit.

COURSE DETAILS:

Service learning is reciprocal learning where students learn through providing service and ongoing reflection. Service learning requires active participation. This service learning course is in partnership with the Fraser Health Healthy Schools Program and focuses on school health promotion. Students will be partnered with a school in the Healthy Schools Program to create and deliver a health promotion project at the school. As part of service learning, students will need to complete 28 hours of volunteering; volunteering time will be integrating to the service site and delivering the health promotion project. Projects can focus on a variety of health topics, such as healthy eating, physical activity and mental wellness, and can be delivered in a variety of ways, such as classroom delivery (i.e. presentations or activities), after school time, or whole school projects. This course is intended to be 'hands-on', engaging, and provide opportunities to practice professional skills and apply theories and concepts into practice using creativity, critical thinking and health promotion principles.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:  By the end of this course, students who participate and fulfill the course requirements will be prepared to:

1. Understand approaches to health promotion including community-based approaches and settings-based approaches.
2. Explain school health promotion frameworks and approaches, such as comprehensive school health.
3. Explain the concepts of community development, community engagement and community-based participatory research.
4. Explain the community development process within a school context.
5. Understand how to apply evidence-based decision making within the context of community development. Describe how theoretical underpinnings of health promotion can be used in various settings.
6. Reflect upon personal and professional skills (e.g. self awareness, collaboration, team building professional confidence, reflection)

COURSE TOPICS: 

• Concepts, principles, scholarship, and practice roots of service learning, community-based participatory research, and action research as approaches for health promotion
• Strategies and tools for working with and serving community partners
• School health promotion frameworks, approaches, research and strategies
• Application of public health core competencies, such as evidence informed decision making, to school health promotion
• Ethical issues in community-based health promotion and collaborative community-university activities
• Useful assessment tools such as environmental scans, asset mapping, & PhotoVoice
• Personal and professional development; competencies associated with professionalism; engagement with communities throughout one’s career

Grading

Materials

MATERIALS + SUPPLIES:

CANVAS: The course schedule, materials, and essential links will be available to students on SFU’s CANVAS online course utility. There is no assigned textbook for this course.