Abstract
Service learning allows health sciences students to connect what they learn in the classroom with real-world experiences. The goal of this article was to examine the experiences of students in a nutrition course who completed their service learning assignment at a community food bank before or after a large natural disaster—the October 2015 flood in South Carolina. Sources of data included an online survey and a qualitative content analysis of the service learning assignment reflection papers. Students (n = 106 completed the course) equally valued their service learning experience at both pre- and post-flood periods; however, significantly more post-flood students (44%) rated the training they received prior to volunteering as inadequate than pre-flood students (7%, χ2 = 7.55, p < .01). From the reflection papers, themes that emerged more often in post-flood papers were related to altruism (e.g., mentions of wanting to volunteer in the future, include others in their volunteer experiences, or donate food) as compared to pre-flood papers, which tended to mention more of the technical aspects of volunteering, such as comments around sorting or bagging food. Analysis of the reflection papers also revealed several students who volunteered pre-flood but returned to volunteer again after the flood. The results of this study indicate that students can familiarize themselves with volunteer opportunities through service learning that enable them to return to their volunteer location at a time of community crisis and need; however, additional training regarding the impact of natural disasters would be beneficial.
Academic service learning opportunities allow for students to provide community service in a real-world context that connects their coursework to the services they provide (de Groot, Alexander, Culp, & Keith, 2015; Seifer, 1998) and allows students to meet community needs while applying critical thinking skills (Condon, Grimsley, Knaack, Pitz, & Stehr, 2015; Kruger, Kruger, & Suzuki, 2015) and receive experiential learning opportunities (Wagenaar, Scherpbier, Boshuizen, & van der Vleuten, 2003). In addition, students can learn about topics in nontraditional settings while providing valuable service to the community (Sobota, Barnes, Fitzpatrick, & Sobota, 2015). Service learning also places students in settings that are less controlled than a traditional classroom setting. Particularly for service learning trips outside the students’ native country, students have expressed safety concerns around threat of crime (Rovers, Japs, Truong, & Shah, 2016), exposure to infectious diseases (Chuang et al., 2015; Rovers et al., 2016), and terrorism (Chuang et al., 2015). In addition, natural disasters have also been discussed as a concern by students prior to engaging in service learning (Chuang et al., 2015), although research in this area has been limited.
Natural disasters provide an opportunity for naturalistic experiments examining the impact of disasters on a variety of health-related outcomes, such as changes in posttraumatic stress after an earthquake (Hikichi, Aida, Tsuboya, Kondo, & Kawachi, 2016), resilience after a terrorist attack (Tsai & Venkataramani, 2015), and food security after a flood (Breisinger, Ecker, Thiele, & Wiebelt, 2016). In October of 2015, 7 weeks into the fall semester, Columbia, South Carolina, experienced historic flooding, named a 1,000 year flood because there was a 0.1% chance that a flood would happen of that magnitude in any given year, exceeding 20 inches of rainfall in some places within a 2- to 3-day period (Holmes, 2015).
As part of the Applied Human Nutrition course offered by the Department of Health Promotion, Education, and Behavior at a large public university in South Carolina, students are required to complete a service learning assignment. For this assignment, students completed a 2-hour volunteer shift at a local food bank (Harvest Hope; www.harvesthope.org) and then wrote a reflection paper about their experience. The fall 2015 semester presented a unique opportunity to collect feedback on a community volunteer experience before and after a natural disaster. This food bank played a vital role in the community for those who were affected by the flooding, providing more than 800,000 meals during the week of the flooding (Harvest Hope, 2015). The goal of this article is to examine the impact of a natural disaster on students’ experiences with a nutrition-related service learning classroom component.
Method
Students who enrolled in the Nutrition course received an overview of service learning from the university’s Assistant Director for Service Learning and Engagement and a 1-hour in-class training session from Harvest Hope. Students signed up for volunteer times, which were available from September 2, 2015, through November 12, 2015. As part of their assignment, students had to complete a two-page reflection paper that addressed what was memorable about their experience, how the experience met/did not meet their expectations, likes and dislikes of the experience, and how the experience affected how they think about hunger and future choices they make. Students who enroll in the course can be undergraduate or graduate students, but are mainly upper-level undergraduates from the Arnold School of Public Health’s Exercise Science program. Other health and non-health majors also take the course as an elective, along with some graduate students in public health.
Both quantitative and qualitative sources of data were used for this project. The first source was an online, anonymous survey that students completed at the end of the semester about their service learning experience. The survey assessed demographics and asked students to rate their experience with the volunteer assignment on a 5-point Likert-type scale (see Table 1). Students were also asked to rate how effectively the training prepared them for their volunteer experience. Higher numbers reflected more positive scores (e.g., felt the experience was more meaningful). The second source of data was the written reflection assignment. Responses from students who completed their service learning volunteer experience before the flood were compared with those who completed their volunteer experience after the flood. Dates and names were removed from the reflection papers to ensure confidentiality. As this service learning project and reflection paper was part of a class assignment, the study was deemed institutional review board exempt.
Questionnaire Items Comparing Responses From Students Who Completed Their Service Learning Activity Before and After the Flood.
Note. The totals vary among the questions due to students choosing not to answer or selecting “3” as their answer, indicating a neutral answer, which was not included in the analysis.
Statistical Analysis
Demographic characteristics were calculated using descriptive statistics. Comparisons between two continuous variables were conducted using independent samples t tests and differences between categorical variables were calculated using chi-square tests of independence. For the analysis of Likert-type scale data (e.g., experience with the service learning experience), data were dichotomized into positive (scores of four or five) or negative (scores of one or two) with scores of three (meaning neither positive nor negative) being removed. This was done to understand students who felt strongly either way and compare their responses.
The qualitative data were analyzed using qualitative content analysis (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005). One member of the research team used 10 papers to establish a code book based on emergent themes. This researcher, along with two other members of the research team, coded the 10 papers and then met as a group to establish consensus on the terms used for coding. Two researchers then used this final code book to code all the reflection papers using NVivo Version 10 for Windows (QSR International, 2014). The frequencies of each codes were tallied for each reflection paper. Reflection papers were then divided into two groups: service learning completed before the flood or after the flood. We calculated the percentage of papers that included each code in both groups and compared the percentage of times a code was mentioned in a paper from a pre-flood experience (e.g., number of pre-flood papers divided by the number of mentions) to the percentage of times a code was mentioned in a paper from a post-flood experience. Themes from pre-flood papers that differed by 10% or more from post-flood papers were examined further. For example, if a theme appeared 13 times in a pre-flood paper (out of 70 papers, corresponding to 19% mention rate) but only 1 time in a post-flood paper (out of 33 papers, corresponding with a 3% mention rate) then 19% minus 3% corresponded to a 16 percentage point difference between the two groups of papers and therefore, because it is >10%, the theme was considered to be different between pre- and post-flood and was considered a significant outcome to be examined and presented within the findings. If a theme appeared in a paper multiple times, each incidence of that theme was included in the count. Multiple mentions of a theme in one paper served as an indication that it was central to the experience of the student and the multiple counts helped to reflect that by weighting that theme.
Results
Students (n = 106 completed course) were from a variety of majors but were mostly Exercise Science majors (n = 85, 80%). Other majors included Public Health (n = 4, 4%), Nursing (n = 3, 3%), Biological Sciences (n = 3, 3%), no degree declared (n = 3, 3%), graduate degrees (Public Health and Physical Education; n = 2, 2%), and other (n = 6, 5%).
Quantitative Survey
There were 100 students who completed the follow-up survey (94% completion rate). The majority of students were in their third year of college (61%), were female (71%), and White (82% White, 7% Black, 5% more than one race), with a mean age of 20.9 ± 2.4 years. There were no differences in demographic characteristics comparing those students who volunteered pre- (n = 64) and post-flood (n = 36), and the majority of students (62%) had never volunteered at a food bank before. There were no differences in any of the survey questions between those who volunteered pre- or post-flood (Table 1) with the exception of the item asking students to rate how effective the training they received was to help them perform their volunteer duties effectively. Significantly more students who volunteered after the flood felt they were not prepared or trained effectively to perform their volunteer duties as compared to students who volunteered pre-flood (p < .01).
Qualitative Content Analysis of Reflection Papers
There were a total of 103 papers included in the analysis, with one paper excluded due to not being about volunteering at Harvest Hope. A total of 11 themes with 76 distinct subthemes emerged from the qualitative analyses. The 11 themes were the following: (1) location and setting, (2) expectations and outcomes, (3) previous or new volunteer experience, (4) flood and general disaster relief, (5) descriptions of food present and impact on own food choices, (6) sympathy, (7) outcomes from volunteer experience, (8) relating experience to class concepts, (9) tasks completed, (10) training or orientation, and (11) interactions with others. Subthemes were examined for analysis. The following 10 subthemes occurred 10% or more often in the post-flood reflection papers than in the pre-flood papers and are in order of greatest difference between post-flood occurrences and pre-flood occurrences: (1) experience made student want to volunteer more, (2) mentions of the flood, (3) wanting to include others in their volunteer experience, (4) experience surpassed expectations, (5) intend to donate food in the future, (6) witnessed high volume of donations, (7) experience not useful, (8) experience felt disorganized, (9) food bank set-up was organized, and (10) found the experience to be rewarding or enjoyable. The following 13 themes appeared more frequently in pre-flood papers than post-flood papers and are in order of greatest difference between pre-flood occurrences and post-flood occurrences: (1) comments on sorting or bagging food activities, (2) use of expired foods, (3) experience met expectations, (4) desire to reduce food waste at home, (5) healthy options available, (6) little choice of food available, (7) realize the impact of hunger locally, (8) appreciative of one’s own food security, (9) unappealing food, (10) negative volunteer experiences, (11) positive interaction with staff or volunteers, (12) no interaction with patrons, (13) comments on broad reach of food bank.
To understand the impact of the flood on the service learning experience, statements from student papers that were coded as related to the flood were specifically examined in further depth. Several flood-specific themes related to service learning emerged and are discussed below. Numerous students mentioned how seeing other volunteers sacrifice their time and money to help at Harvest Hope had an impact on them.
Since I volunteered after the floods I think I got a different experience than other students that volunteered before the flood. I met two volunteers that were vacationing in South Carolina and decided to skip it to help at the food bank. This had a huge impact on me because I was so impressed by this couple and how they sacrificed so much to help out. Since I volunteered there right after the flood, my most memorable experience was a man was there dropping off water bottles and food. He had driven all through the night from Birmingham, Alabama with a trailer packed completely full with donations from his church.
Students also discussed the volume of people who were in need at Harvest Hope after the flood.
I remember seeing all of the people waiting for their buggies. . . . There were a lot of people there. My expectations when volunteering for Harvest Hope was that there would only be a few families that came in that needed food. When I got there I soon realized that there were a lot of people who were in need and tons of families that lost everything they had due to the flood. In my short two hours being there, we probably served at least 30 to 40 families.
Interestingly, several papers where the students had volunteered before the flood had mentions of the flood in the paper. Examining the quotes within these pre-flood papers revealed that several students returned to volunteer at Harvest Hope again after the flood occurred. These papers demonstrated how the service learning experience empowered them to volunteer and inspire others to do the same.
I have since been back to Harvest Hope to volunteer on my own time and plan to make it a weekly volunteer shift. . . . Especially following the flood, I know how many people are in need and I plan to do what I can to help. I actually encouraged my sorority sisters to volunteer at Harvest Hope during the flood relief efforts. We had about 15 girls volunteer time and food.
Since the quantitative survey results revealed that slightly more students who volunteered post-flood felt the training they received didn’t help them perform their volunteer duties effectively as compared to students who volunteered pre-flood, quotes pertaining to how prepared students felt were also examined. Several students, particularly post-flood, felt like their volunteer time was disorganized:
One thing that I disliked was that the whole process seemed to be kind of unorganized. It didn’t seem like there was a very set system in the warehouse. I disliked that I wasn’t given a lot of instruction before beginning a task. . . . When I had questions, sometimes it was difficult to find somebody to help me.
Discussion
The 2015 Columbia, South Carolina, flooding presented a unique opportunity to study the impact of a natural disaster on a service learning experience. The findings suggest that students who volunteered post-flood may have had a richer experience overall and that some of the key themes that emerged provide guidance to improve future service learning experiences. Specifically empowerment, connections to those in their “own backyard,” comparison of organization between facilities with higher/lower need, desire to inspire others, meeting other volunteers, and a need for training to prepare for volunteering after a natural disaster.
From the quantitative survey, students who volunteered both pre- and post-flood equally enjoyed and valued their experience and found the experience to be meaningful. The one aspect that potentially differed between the pre- and post-flood students was how prepared they felt after their volunteer training. Community organizations that offer service learning opportunities may want to add information to their trainings about how events, such as natural disasters, can impact a student’s experience. While service learning in itself can serve as a form of training for health professional students by giving them hands-on opportunities to work with individuals in need (Boysen, Salsbury, Derby, & Lawrence, 2016), there is also a need for adequate training upfront that provides students with information on a variety of events that could happen. Prior research has demonstrated that providing intensive training that addresses student concerns around what to expect before service learning assignments occur could decrease student apprehension related to completing service learning requirements (Chuang et al., 2015). Students may also benefit from a debriefing session after the volunteer assignment to talk about their experiences (Boysen et al., 2016).
Providing additional training in the classroom setting or adding extra experiential components to the service learning assignment could also help better train students and strengthen the overall connection to the community experience. For example, role-playing can be used effectively in the classroom to train students on how to handle various situations that may occur during their service learning experience (Aghababaeian et al., 2013). In addition, previous research examining the use of service learning activities in health promotion have demonstrated that students may benefit from providing the class with a brief, oral presentation of their experiences, which allows sharing of experience and learning from one another (Bill & Casola, 2016). Providing multiple reflection opportunities for students can also allow for instructors to uncover any issues that may be arising during the service learning experience and address them early in the semester (Bill & Casola, 2016). Last, students could benefit from completing case studies presenting different scenarios that could occur during their service learning experience (Bistritz et al., 2015; Wilson, McNeill, & Gillon, 2016). This would allow students to learn how to navigate issues that can arise during their service learning experience before they are placed into the community.
Several themes emerged from the qualitative content analysis as well. As expected, students who volunteered post-flood mentioned the flood more often. Qualitative analysis also supported student responses to survey items, indicating that students may have felt less prepared for their volunteer experience when it occurred post-flood as compared to pre-flood. Other themes that emerged more often in post-flood papers were related to altruism—with more mentions of wanting to volunteer in the future, include others in their volunteer experiences, or donate food—as compared to pre-flood. Themes that were more prevalent in pre-flood papers were related to the more technical aspects of their experience, such as experiences with bagging and sorting food or handling expired foods. Research has demonstrated that adding a service learning component to a classroom course enhances learning (Markus, Howard, & King, 1993), allows students to apply what they learn in the course to new situations (Markus et al., 1993), and increases positive attitudes toward the community with which they’re working (Leung et al., 2012). In addition, adding a service learning component to a class can also enhance a students’ personal values and lead to a greater awareness of societal problems (Markus et al., 1993). This was clearly evident in the response papers of those students who volunteered after the flood. It is possible that the flood provided a more real-world example of food insecurity and hunger, creating a much more intensive service learning experience for post-flood students. Last, several students reported returning to Harvest Hope to volunteer as part of the flood relief. This demonstrates that service learning components in the classroom setting can provide the community with a cadre of trained volunteers who have a place they can readily volunteer during acute times of crisis.
Strengths and Limitations
The present study has several strengths. A mixed-methods design was used employing both quantitative survey data and qualitative reflection paper data. In addition, multiple coders were used to analyze the data. The study also has some limitations. Individuals were not randomly assigned to their service learning time and therefore, individuals who signed up for volunteer assignments later in the semester (e.g., post-flood) may have differed from students who volunteered for times earlier in the semester. In addition, the two groups of students compared in this study represent two groups that experienced very different service learning environments. Last, the overwhelming majority of student participants were female (71%).
Conclusion
On October 4, 2015, the midlands area of South Carolina experienced historic flooding that led to a significantly negative impact on the economic growth in this area (Burris, 2015). Food pantries are a vital safety net for the community (Biggerstaff, Morris, & Nichols-Casebolt, 2002) and food supplies can be depleted during times of economic crisis (Keller, 2009). Students in the fall 2015 Applied Human Nutrition class got to experience firsthand how their own community responds during a natural disaster and how that disaster can impact hunger in their community. Results of this study demonstrate that students may benefit from additional training regarding the impact of a variety of contingencies, such as natural disasters, economic downturns, and social upheaval, on their volunteer experience. These occurrences are rare, however, so training could inform students that normal volunteer times can include days when the volume of need is high due to unforeseen circumstances. This study also demonstrated that building community service learning into the classroom setting allows students to familiarize themselves with a volunteer opportunity that many may be drawn back to during a time of community crisis and need.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.