Students Can Earn ECTS Credits for Taking Action against Covid-19

Students doing community work to help contain the coronavirus by managing the phones at the city’s crisis center, by getting weekly groceries for senior citizens, or by helping at outpatient hospice services will be rewarded by the University of Freiburg with ECTS credits, provided they take part in the Service Learning module offered by the Center for Key Qualifications (ZfS). This new type of volunteer service has been added to the module’s other fields, which include digitization, life and environmental sciences, intercultural relations and migration, environment and sustainability, and political lobby work.

The goal of the ZfS’s module is to encourage students to learn through performing active community service in civil society. The module consists of several elements in which students learn about necessary qualifications, reflect on certain issues, and receive advice from supervisors, in addition to completing 30 hours of practical service. Students who successfully complete all of these elements can earn 4 ECTS credits. In response to the current situation, students who begin voluntary work helping to contain the spread of the coronavirus before the middle of May 2020, when the module officially begins, this will count toward the credits. “However, at least 10 hours must be served after the orientation event, so that students can still directly implement and review new approaches and issues,” said Verena Saller, the director of ZfS. One of the project leaders of the Service Learning module, Anette Bender, said that several students have also recently approached the ZfS with ideas of their own or because they want to volunteer for new initiatives. She said that the University is open to this, adding: “We’re expecting students to be very flexible in the current situation, so we want to do the same for them.”

Service Learning offers people the opportunity to learn through active service. One of its goals is to provide a framework for the volunteer work done by students that is structured around specific issues and academic fields. One of the ways the module does this is by organizing an interdisciplinary discussion at the beginning of the module, followed by workshops as well as meeting with supervisors during practical service, accompanied by the creation of a work journal, which the students use to reflect on their work at the end of the module. “The students network with each other, and they value being able to manage their own learning,” said Waltraud Ziegler, who is also a project leader of the module, together with Bender.

Usually, between 30 and 40 students successfully complete the module every semester. Many of them stay on and continue to work as volunteers in their chosen projects. At the moment, several students have already asked specifically about coronavirus-related volunteer work, and the first participants have registered for the module. Students can sign up until May 11, 2020. Whether or not orientation can still take place on May 15, 2020, is unclear, however. “We’re currently working on our classroom lessons, so that we can offer them online if necessary,” Bender said. Fifteen initiatives and organizations have also confirmed that volunteer work will still be possible under the new restrictions.

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