Service-Learning for Sustainability Entrepreneurship in Rural Areas: What Is Its Global Impact on Business University Students?

Almudena Martínez-Campillo, María del Pilar Sierra-Fernández and Yolanda Fernández-Santos
Additional contact information
Almudena Martínez-Campillo: Department of Business Administration, Universidad de León, Campus de Vegazana s/n, 24071 León, Spain
María del Pilar Sierra-Fernández: Department of Business Administration, Universidad de León, Campus de Vegazana s/n, 24071 León, Spain
Yolanda Fernández-Santos: Department of Business Administration, Universidad de León, Campus de Vegazana s/n, 24071 León, Spain

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 19, 1-21

Abstract: Service-Learning (SL) is a teaching innovation method that combines learning and social service objectives to improve educational quality and graduate employability. To date, there are hardly any studies on its global impact on university students. This paper describes and evaluates an SL experience for Sustainability Entrepreneurship in the context of Spanish Higher Education. Based on knowledge acquired in classrooms, multi-disciplinary teams of students from different subjects related to Business Administration offered support to potential entrepreneurs from rural municipalities in the complex task of writing a successful Business Plan for their projects for local sustainability. Within this academic framework, our study has two goals: (1) to assess the self-perception of university students about the improvement in their curricular development, professional skills and civic-social responsibility after participating in the SL experience; and (2) to estimate its possible effect on academic performance. The results show that the students acknowledged they had improved their social and sustainability commitment and their curricular development, and had acquired skills that society increasingly demands from future business professionals. Furthermore, service-students achieved significantly higher academic performance than a control group of non-participating students. These findings highlight the effectiveness of SL to provide a more holistic education for business university students.

Keywords: Service-Learning; Sustainability Entrepreneurship; rural areas; global impact; business university students; sustainable development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/19/5296/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/19/5296/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:19:p:5296-:d:270804

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().