The new service-learning chair will help make the UB a more engaged institution

"In short, service-learning is a way of working for a socially committed university", says Anna Escofet, director of the chair and lecturer at the Faculty of Education. Professor Escofet is a member of the UB ApS Group, made up of professors from various disciplines, which has been disseminating ApS at the University of Barcelona for more than ten years. Escofet says that ApS has an international dimension, with pioneering initiatives in Latin America and North America.

The Board of the Fèlix Llobet Foundation states that “the ApS Chair is a network meeting space that is sustained from real projects that promote horizontal dialogue between different knowledge, free of technicalities and dogmatic judgments, and that can play in favour of a technical, political and pragmatic change in the context of social transformation”. All this goes in line with the Foundation’s aim of “promoting an developing projects that comply with principles such as community strengthening, rootedness in the territory, experimentation, social innovation, evaluation, transferability, sustainability and networking”.

Currently, practically all UB faculties offer the possibility of participating in ApS projects —more than thirty UB faculties offer it—. The University's ApS projects include activities in different knowledge disciplines: from accompanying people with disabilities or homeless people to participating in local environmental improvement projects, or explaining knowledge acquired at the University to secondary school students in the initiative "Sharing ideas. The university goes to high school".

ApS projects can be developed within the framework of a subject or as a curricular practice. They can also be carried out in the form of a final project for a bachelor's or master's degree. In the latter cases, service learning allows for research on problems relevant to society.

First course entirely dedicated to ApS, next academic year

In the 2023-2024 academic year, the UB will offer for the first time the Service Learning, Engagement and Social Transformation course, entirely dedicated to ApS. It will be taught in the faculties of Fine Arts, Biology, Economics and Business, Education, Pharmacy and Food Sciences, and Nursing. Within the framework of this subject, students will participate in interdisciplinary projects, with the aim of putting their knowledge and their ability to investigate and intervene in reality at the service of the common good, in order to respond to the needs of the community in which social entities work.

The Chair that is now born wants to institutionalize all service learning initiatives at the University of Barcelona. For this reason, training, research, knowledge transfer and the promotion of SLA will be promoted. Among the specific activities that are planned is the creation of an annual award for the best final undergraduate and master's degree projects carried out within the framework of an ApS project, as well as an award for the top doctoral theses carried out in cooperation with the third social sector. Another project is the creation of a living lab with social entities and the organization of a fair of entities to make ApS known, as well as the organization of working and deepening conferences.