Service-Learning, an Experience in Higher Education Framed within the Context of COVID-19

This article presents a model for implementing the service-learning methodology based on the Sustainable Development Goals. This work describes the experience carried out during the 2020-2021 academic year with first-year students from the Degree in Pedagogy at the University of Valencia (Spain), an experience framed within the COVID-19 pandemic. The results prove the suitability of using this methodology to enhance the teaching competencies related to learning skills together with personal development skills. Planning teaching actions on the premise of solving actual problems helps the University contribute and generate an impact in terms of social commitment. In addition, the students show an increased level of motivation towards learning when developing socially useful projects


Introduction
There has been an extensive debate on the role that education plays in training citizenship, given the transformative potential that such training may in itself represent, through the 20 th Century and the first decades of the 21 st .
This debate has been transferred to university institutions, which many voices claim to be optimal spaces for learning, not only in the broadest vocational and cultural senses, but also humane, and therefore, ethical and moral. It should not be forgotten that enabling learning situations related to training citizenship is one of university institutions' own duties. High-quality university training cannot separate vocational from citizenship training (Martinez, 2006).
Accordingly, despite a lack of clear consensus about the specific methodologies, strategies and/or resources serving as a guide to training citizenship, there is nonetheless an agreement about the appropriateness of bringing education and training together in real settings and contexts, as well as favouring the competences required for community life. These teachinglearning settings and contexts are promoted to solve conflicts from a variety of disciplines and areas of knowledge (Guerrero & Calero, 2013). The insertion of these in-classroom pedagogical practices implies the use of active methodologies with which students become the central pillar in the teachinglearning process, and professorship turn into a guide and/or accompanying figure. Active educational methodologies connect to a larger extent with students' interests, as they are able to observe the practical part from learning, which has been acquired in real situations and contexts (Silva & Maturana, 2017).
Aiming at exploring, in a more specific manner, the methods which could be used in the classroom for citizenship training and community involvement, which in turn enable a connection to the technical and professional learning required by different university degrees in a way that students find motivational, it has been found that a methodology that facilitates both dimensions is Self-Learning. Its implementation in university environments  graders from the University of Valencia on the subject Organisation: Strategies for Educational Action in Diverse Contexts.
In addition, given the restructuring undergone in education due to COVID-19, this experience has shown an opportunity to take action to deal with some of the demands that the pandemic has arisen which, in turn, could be linked to educational actions in the development of projects that favor community services. Creativity and innovation, with the help of new technologies, allow the design of different service-learning proposals that bring other ways and modes of generating actions and/or caring services that do not necessarily require on-site attendance (REAS, 2020).

Description of the implementation model
Any implementation of a service-learning proposal in the classroom requires a model acting as a guide that will put the methodology into practice.
Accordingly, and following the steps provided by Puig (2015), the experience developed in higher education is this: These examples helped create group formation in the classroom and choose the subjects to work on. Each group developed initial research before deciding the subject that their own service-learning would address, and they explored the needs and opportunities both inside the university, seen as the body that integrates their subject, and those entities nearby the space where they intended to contribute with their service. Then, the groups analysed the training requirements for the subject by examining the teaching guide; it was identified that projects based on service-learning methodology would help develop the capacity to get involved in processes that favor research capacity and innovation in educational contexts, on the basis of participative and collaborative process dynamisation, and not only on professional development, but also personal and social. Additionally, they observed which entities would be able to cooperate with the University of Valencia in the implementation of their service-learning projects, and also detected these entities' needs for services. In this case, as we encounter an area with different context typologies where learning (formal, non-formal, and informal) takes place, students are offered to set their own training routes once they have established contact with entities, they deem suitable for their projects.

Needs Detection
There are different service-learning typologies: investigation, direct and/or indirect intervention, and advocacy (REDS-SDSN, 2017). In the case of awareness raising campaigns (advocacy), contact with entities will not be needed, but it will be necessary to establish a detection stage to acknowledge the needs and understanding of the public to whom we address our campaign using different tools to collect and/or analyse information (surveys, bibliographic review, interviews, etc.).
2. Agreement stage: the next step was the stage of legal formalisation of the cooperation agreement between the university and those entities that had been successfully contacted for the service-learning projects to be developed. In this case, the University of Valencia offered counseling and follow-up by means of two professors mentoring the projects, and the students were

Results
A total of 23 projects were finally produced. They were very different from each other regarding the subjects, as students were able to choose their own subject on the basis of their own affinity and interests as long as a real need for the service was detected. During February and March, once the groups were formed, several sessions were held in the classroom to plan the ApS, collect data to develop the need detection stage, and arrange the first contact with the centers and/or entities in such cases where the project typology (see figure 1) was framed within direct and/or indirect interventions (16 projects).
Different instruments for data collection were selected to base their projects on rigorous sources (surveys, interviews, readings, etc.) in the cases where the service-learning typology was a campaign (7 projects). Service-learning projects developed in the classroom were very diverse (see figure 2), which enriched students notably as they acquired knowledge not only by producing the projects but also after presenting the results to their peers. Service-learning projects aimed at groups at risk of exclusion were more predominant. Your culture enriches me. The goal of this project is to promote cultural exchange and development among different municipalities and autonomous regions, in this case, the municipalities of Manises (Valencia) and Iniesta (Cuenca). Participation reached around 55 third-grade secondary education students from two high schools each municipality mentioned above. This project tried to create a cultural bond between both educational centers so the students could observe and learn from cultures other than their own, giving way to a process of acculturation among peers. To achieve this, and taking into account the distance between the centers, students received the proposal of creating Cultural Dissemination Products (CDP) on the basis of some video and/or presentation which they could use to explain characteristics inherent to their culture (gastronomy, folklore, language, etc.

Conclusions
The appropriateness of the nature of the discipline, its adaptability, and applicability of their contents to real situations make the service-learning methodology and pedagogy a perfect combination for planning educational action. In recent years, there have been many university teaching experiences that have shown, in the same manner as the present research has exposed, the potential that this methodology possesses to activate students' learning in every dimension: cognitive, emotional, and social.
However, such experiences tend to be located mostly in the areas of Social and Legal Sciences. Service-learning usage promotes competence development, improving the level of acquisition of these sciences after their practical implementation (Martínez, 2013 are favorable towards this kind of educational actions, where they can exert real participation in the planning and implementation of these projects (Uruñuela, 2011).
Moreover, placing value on the social impact generated by this experience after its implementation is a must, since around 2,000 people have participated in the services developed by the first-grader Pedagogy students from the University of Valencia during 2020-2021. As it was initially mentioned, training responsible and transformative citizenship in contexts of coexistence needs to be integrated into higher education. Thus, SDGs' incorporation within the proposals formulated in the classroom through service-learning aims at constituting an example of the University's role to contribute to the development and resolution of these challenges, which are vital for achieving sustainable and social justice goals.