It marks the beginning of a complex interaction, a challenge to their cultural habits, and an unparalleled opportunity for friendship. Through their service projects, students are placed in conversation with the community at the points of their pain. Learning Community Successful learning experiences require faculty, students, and others to interrelate easily and well. The L.A. Term is a flexible structure supporting the process of making connections, building relationships, constructing knowledge, and solving problems. It is the quality of the environment and the relationship of the person to it that ultimately determines how much that person will learn.
Participants eat, breathe, walk, and serve within the context of their study.
This allows for a concentration of attention not easily achieved in a campus environment. Effective participation in-context also becomes the best measuring stick to evaluate the level of learner competency development. The community becomes a classroom through pedagogies that dynamically connect traditional classroom activities with structured urban experiences and engagement with community institutions. Spiritual Nurture Chapel-type events offered through many Christian colleges aim to envision Christ and empower for service. Operating the program within the intensely public realm of the inner city unsettles this tendency.