Keeping up with change

Background: As part of the undergraduate occupational therapy clinical training at Stellenbosch University all final year students are placed at various role-emerging community sites for a period of 6 weeks as part of their... [ view full abstract ]

Background:
As part of the undergraduate occupational therapy clinical training at Stellenbosch University all final year students are placed at various role-emerging community sites for a period of 6 weeks as part of their service learning module. The focus of the module in terms of student learning is to expose them to the primary health care setting where they have to deliver indirect occupational therapy services in order to manage a community project based on identified needs within the specific community. Students have to reflect on their development academically, personally and in terms of social awareness.

The service learning module needs to be evaluated to identify those program-elements which need to be retained, adapted and redesigned in order to optimize the learning opportunities for students.

Evaluation:
The focus of this paper is to evaluate if the outcome set for student learning is achieved. End of block reflections of students for a period of two years were used as the data source.

Application to education and /or practice:
The discussion will focus on the concept of service learning within the health science context, aiming to extract the unique learning opportunities offered by service learning.