What is the social impact of university service-learning projects on citizens and community organizations? A scoping review

The social impact of university service learning refers to the opportunities that service learning generates for collaboration between the educational sphere and the social sphere. Such collaboration enables stakeholders to combine learning and social values, to co-create and to build community. The objective of this scoping review was to map and categorize the available evidence regarding the social impact of university service-learning projects, identifying the tools, indicators, and methodologies used to assess this impact. To this end, we reviewed quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods studies published between 1999 and 2023 in Medline (PubMed), CINAHL (EBSCO), ERIC, Scopus, and Dialnet. The results showed forty-three studies that described service-learning experiences from the participants’ perspective, both quantitatively and qualitatively, and that identified the direct effects perceived by the community. We conclude that longitudinal quantitative studies are necessary to measure the long-term impact of university service-learning. Such studies should use representative samples and validated tools to allow for expanding impact indicators and to create optimal service-learning experiences and outcomes.