From June 5-9, 2006, 17 JFDP Alumni, along with 7 members of American Councils regional staff, participated in a summer workshop entitled, "Service Learning: Increasing Educational Outcomes and Community Impact in Higher Education," in Bijela, Montenegro. The worskshop gave conference participants a chance to talk abut their experiences inplementing Service Learning in their classroom, and develop a plan for how to integrate such projects more effectively in the future.

As part of the application process to attend the workshop, alumni were required to design and implement a small scale service learning project in their own classrooms. At the workshop, each alumni made a presentation about the project they had completed, being sure to answer several key questions:

- what did you and your students do?

- how did this benefit the community?

- how did this integrate the curriculum of your course?

- how were students evaluated?

- what obstacles did you face in implementing this project?

- if you could do the project again, what would you change?

- were their any unexpected benefits / harms of the project?

After each presentation, alumni discussed the project and gave constructive criticism about how it could be improved, both in terms of its educational value and its community impacts.

In addition to individual alumni presentations, American Councils staff prepared sessions on the history and philosophy of the Service Learning movement, the ability of Service Learning to help in career development for students and educators, the challenges involved in formally integrating service into the curriculum, and the specific challenges in SEE countries to which Service Learning could effectively respond.

As the presentations drew to a close, alumni and staff drew up a list of issues that had been raised over the course of the workshop, and which individual educators needed to address in order to more effectively understand and implement Service Learning in SEE. Finally, working with other alumni from their individual countries, they discussed the best way to move forward with the methodology.

A total of 19 projects were discussed at the workshop - each participant presented their own project, and Luljeta Koshi presented the projects of two alumni unable to attend. The projects represented a wide range of disciplines and approaches to the implementation of Service Learning. Milos Besic's students provided free business consulting to a local, state-owned factory struggling to survive in a free-market economy. Adi Fejzic asked his English students to design one-page grammar helpers which will be distributed, free-of-charge, to English schoolteachers and students. Zorana Misic's students analyzed the stool of neighbors' dogs and cats to indentify potentially-deadly parasites, and gave advice as to the steps each pet owner should take. Goran Radonjic's students made public displays which offered artistic criticism of popular films. Aida Koci's students designed and distributed a pamphlet seeking to raise awareness of the challenges faced by students with special needs. Together with their students, other alumni visited orphanages, taught music at local schools, made films about the plight of youth, updated old engineering textbooks, established pen-pal programs, and organized student-teaching opportunities. Every alumni faced different problems and created unique solutions, and every alumni agreed that Service Learning was an idea worth thinking about in the future.

"The topic was very useful," said Goran Radonjic. "I got thoughts and suggestions for future projects, discussed many aspects of Service Learning with my colleagues, met some JFDP alumni for the first time, and exchanged many ideas about teaching."

RESULTS:

20 Service Learning projects were conducted in SEE between April and June, 2006. These projects utilized the talents of hundreds of students to create meaningful change in their communities.

Alumni developed country-specific plans for advancing Service Learning in their curriculum.

Alumni developed plans for SEE collaboration across borders.

Alumni refined their idea of Service Learning, and created a series of questions that should be answered in order to continue forward with the implementation of SL (attached).