Resumen

SANDREA TOLEDO, Lisette  y  REYES, Luz Maritza. Community service learning projects and their influence on prosocial behaviors of university students. Rev. Ped [online]. 2010, vol.31, n.89, pp.379-404. ISSN 0798-9792.

This study aimed to determine the influence of the application of a project of Community Service Learning in the strengthening of Prosocial Behavior in university students. A study was conducted of behaviors before and after the participation of students in the project. The approach taken was fundamentally positivist, explicative and experimental, following a quasi-experimental design with a pre and post-test group and a control group. The population consisted of 100 students: 50 in the experimental group (EXP) and the same number in the control group (CON). A questionnaire was employed. The results were analyzed with the SPSS (17.0) to compare the medians of the groups through the t student test. The comparison of the pre-tests, EXP1 and CON1 was not significant (sig: 0.221), pointing to the homogeneity of the groups before community service intervention. The comparison between EXP2 and CON2 was significant (sig: 0.000) favoring the experimental group indicating that there had been a change in the group. The medians of the experimental groups, before (EXP1) and after community service (EXP2) were statistically different (sig. 0.000). No significant differences were observed between the pre-test (CON1) and the post-test (CON2) applied to the control group (sig. 0.091), which shows that the changes observed in the prosocial behaviors of the experimental group were probably due to the project of Community Service Learning applied. It is concluded that the implementation of the Law on Community Service of the Higher Education Student (2005) could effectively contribute to complementing student education at this level.

Palabras clave : Community service; prosocial behavior; community projects; Venezuelan higher education.

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