The Wiley Handbook of Collaborative Online Learning and Global Engagement

13 Service-Learning as a Catalyst for Global Learning and Civic Engagement: A Collaborative Pedagogical Experiment

Gina Annunziato Dow¹ and Karla Díaz²

¹ Denison University, USA

² Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Ecuador

Education for human freedom is also education for human community. The two cannot exist without each other. Freedom and community are qualities for engaging the world that free us to act with greater knowledge or power. Yet, freedom and community also remind us of the obligations we have to use our knowledge and power responsibly. The paradox of a liberal education is that in the act of making us free, education also binds us to the communities that gave us our freedom in the first place; it makes us responsible to those communities in ways that limit our freedom. In the end, it turns out that liberty is about exercising our freedom in such a way as to make a difference in the world and make a difference for more than just ourselves (Cronon, 1998).

As William Cronon (1998, pp. 73–80) famously writes, a liberal arts education can be described as “education for human freedom.” As such, this education reminds us of our responsibilities to each other, both locally and globally. If we as educators are taking civic learning and engagement seriously at both the local and global levels – that is, if we aim for education that is for human freedom that is used for social responsibility – then we must intentionally design and offer relevant, authentic, and high-impact ...