Everyday Neuroscience: A Community Engagement Course

The University of Pennsylvania offers "Academically Based Community Service" courses, which equip college students with real-world problem-solving skills relevant to their discipline of study in the service of the local community. The present report describes such a course called Everyday Neuroscience, in which Penn undergraduates developed ten neuroscience-relevant laboratory activities for high school students attending a nearby under-resourced public high school. For the community service component of the course, students ran these lab activities with small, consistent groups of high school students, based on topics that included traumatic brain injury, vision, reflexes, and attention. The academic component of the course included written reflections, reading scholarly works about education disparities, and making presentations to the class. At the end of the semester, the undergraduates self-reported that the course improved specific professional skills, namely teaching and communication, innovation and creativity, and critical thinking. Results of the before-and-after survey indicated that certain aspects of psychological and social well-being were rated more positively at the end of the semester compared with the beginning. In particular, students experienced a significant increase in confidence to express their own ideas and the feeling that they had something important to contribute to society. Their reflections revealed a theme of increased awareness of social issues, such as educational disparities. In sum, these results suggest that Everyday Neuroscience imparts professional skills related to communication, innovation and critical thinking, as well as improved social awareness.