A guide for Service Learning Institutionalization of a career

PROLOGUE

knowledge that will contribute to the solution of Chile’s social problems. Thecoordinationand promotion of this methodology depends on the Centro deDesarrolloDocenteUC (CDDoc), an entity that trains and advises professors fromdifferent academic units so that they can apply this form of teaching, a Center that we warmly congratulate for the excellent work performed with this timely and useful Guide. As a balance of what has been achieved so far, this initiative has been implemented since 2005 inmore than a hundred undergraduate courses, whichhas allowed about 40 thousand students to develop service projects related to the curricular objectives of each course, under the guidance of their professors. Furthermore, during these years, 1,100 courses have been carried out with SL (trainings, workshops, product design, diagnostics and health/ educational interventions, among others), andmore than 300 community partners have been involved. The general objective of SL is developing a methodology that, through the active commitment of students to the process, improves educational results and solves problems of the social environment, through a process that has a pedagogical and solidarity component at the same time. Furthermore, the idea is to develop dynamics of community participation with professors, educators and young people with the support of institutions and social actors that allow for community involvement. In thisway, the academic learning may be connected to real problems that are close to the daily lives of young people, involving them in active and social projects that improve their educational performance and their connection with the community.

I am very pleased to present this Guide for the institutionalization of Service Learning in a career, which complements the text Service Learning, 10 years at UC, made available to the community on a digital platform in 2014, on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the SL program at our University. In fact, this initiative created in 2004, seeks to contribute to the development of an educational system that generates meaningful learning based on the relationshipwith society, and to contribute to the development of communities through the projects developed by the students. It is worth reminding that the Program was created in response to the UC’s desire to provide the country with an academic activity that will train integral, enterprising and jointly involved professionals, and that will generate

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