Student service learning and dementia: bridging classroom and clinical experiences

University students in speech-language pathology and nursing were involved in a community service learning project with residents of a long-term care facility who had dementia. Nursing students were asked to interact and converse with residents to the best of their ability (control group, n = 28). Speech-language pathology students were instructed to design a personalized, multi-modality "connection kit" for residents based on the tenets of cognitive linguistic stimulation and facilitative styles of interaction, which were included within course content (experimental group, n = 25). Post-project surveys were administered in an attempt to answer the following research question: Do students perceive benefits from participating in a service learning project involving long-term care residents with dementia? Results revealed that the experimental/trained group of speech-language pathology students reported greater academic and clinical benefits compared to the control group of nursing students. Overall implications were that students benefited from a service learning project, especially when explicit instruction was provided.