What is CETL?

Community Engaged Teaching and Learning (CETL) is an active and critically reflective form of experiential learning which is regarded as a high impact educational practice.

Community Engaged Learning (CEL) is a teaching and learning pedagogy that meaningfully integrates community engagement and curricular programming with intentional alignment between course learning outcomes and community identified needs. CEL involves mutually beneficial collaboration for the purposes of co-learning and co-creating relevant scholarship or scholarly activity that strengthens academic inquiry, personal & professional development and contributes to positive social change/justice*.

CEL enhances teaching and learning while strengthening the relevance of higher education in broader society through critically examining and addressing complex issues we face in the 21st century.

*CEL definition prepared for an unpublished manuscript by Morton, Varghese, & Thomson (2018). Definition draws on Bringle & Hatcher, 1995; Gordon da Cruz, 2017; Kleinhesselink, 2015; Johnson-Curiskis & Wolter, 2004; Morton, 2013; Weigert, 1998.