Community Based Learning (CBL) is a learning approach in which the communities provide the worksite as an extension of the classroom while the university helps communities (organizations) solve their problems through projects proposed based on both sides’ interests. CBL enables universities to play their social and economic roles in the community. CBL, however, is a newly evolving pedagogical approach, which has not been institutionalized as a well-defined process with clearly defined actors and roles.

On one hand, the community organizations do not have the organizational capacity nor do they spare resources for collaboration with academic institutions. Academic institutions, on the other hand, do not have clear mechanisms of effective partnership with the community. The Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT) at ANU initiated a CBL program in 2012; since then the process has gone through an evaluation and revision cycles in order to improve the quality of the offered courses and outcomes. Towards institutionalizing the CBL process, CELT has recently taken important steps of initiation, development and institutionalizing partnerships with the local communities’ organizations.

In my presentation, I will highlight the encountered problems and the major challenges faced the CBL program. More importantly, the presentation will introduce a suggested framework—designed and implemented by CELT team—to solve these problems and to facilitate the CBL process. This issue is of high importance to the civil society institutions, community and non-profit organizations, besides the higher education institutions.

Conference Title

OSF MENA Regional Alumni Conference 2016

Conference Country

Jordan

Conference Date

Oct. 7, 2016 - Oct. 8, 2016

Conference Sponsor

Open Society Institute, New York