Develop your students’ characters through real experience of care

Many universities want to develop graduates who serve others and contribute to the common good. Designing learning experiences that cultivate the character this requires is a challenge we all share: how can students go from understanding a virtue, such as compassion, to practising it in real situations?

Over six cohorts, we have run a 12-week, 25-hour workshop for undergraduates from 13 degree programmes, spanning engineering to law, that ends with students accompanying patients and families in a palliative care unit. Their written reflections taught us that the setting doesn’t matter as much as the sequence of activities does. Here, we’ll share what we learned in the hope that it is useful to colleagues designing similar experiences.

Choose a few virtues students can observe and practise

We found it helpful to focus on a small number of virtues we wanted to instil in students. We work with four: humility, compassion, courage and gratitude. Students can recognise them in their own and others’ behaviour, and they fit the service context.

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Then translate each into plain, actionable language. Ours are: humility is knowing yourself; compassion is active listening and empathy; courage is daring to step forward; gratitude is giving back. Short formulations give students a shared vocabulary and something concrete to try.

Start in everyday life, not at the deep end

Before any service placement, ask students to practise each virtue in familiar settings such as with family, friends and classmates. A listening exercise with a sibling is low risk, and it shows students how hard real listening is.

We build two progressions into the design: from conceptual knowledge to practice, and from everyday contexts to authentic situations of vulnerability. This gradual approach helps students process what they later encounter.

Build in group reflection early

After the first practice exercises, bring students together to share what happened, what was difficult and what they noticed about themselves. This gives individual practice a shared meaning and starts to form a learning community that students will lean on later.

Prepare students for the encounter

Before entering a challenging setting, students need to understand its purpose and its people. In our case, that meant sessions on what palliative care is, on grief and loss. We also held a meeting with the unit’s doctors and nurses, who explained their work and shared their patients’ stories.

Whatever your setting, whether a care home, a shelter or a community organisation, co-design this stage with the host team. Visit first and ask what they need and what is appropriate.

Make immersion gradual: observe first, then act

Students’ first visits should be guided observation: meeting the team and getting to know the environment. Only afterwards should they design and carry out their own actions.

Keep those actions simple. Our students talk with patients, read, sing, paint nails, give hand massages or prepare small gestures of appreciation for the nursing staff. They are not there to perform professional tasks but to be present. As one put it: “I learned that you don’t have to be an expert to be there.”

Several students wrote that they were afraid to enter patients’ rooms and managed it with support. These feelings of fear are normal at this stage, and it allows them to practice courage. For one, “just going took courage”.

Close the loop with structured reflection

End with prompts that tie the experience back to each virtue. We ask:

• What did I learn about myself? (humility)
• How did I put myself at the service of others? What could I give? (compassion)
• What did not go as expected, and how did I respond? (courage)
• Where did I find value? (gratitude)

These questions help students integrate the experience and give you qualitative evidence of what they believe they learned.

Expect the logic of service to flip

The most consistent theme in our students’ reflections is reciprocity. They arrive expecting to give and leave saying they received far more than they offered. Point this out to them in the final session. It helps students see care as a relationship that changes everyone involved, not as one-directional help.

Be clear about what the evidence shows

Reflections and a short self-report questionnaire tell you what students perceive they learned. They do not, on their own, show lasting character change, which is a limitation of our own study, too. It helps to present the evidence in those terms and, where possible, to plan follow-up with students after the course ends.

Open it to every discipline

Experiences of care are valuable well beyond the health disciplines. Future engineers, lawyers and accountants also benefit from encountering human fragility, practising listening and thinking about their profession as service.

From concept to practice

In short: choose a few virtues, start in everyday life, prepare the encounter, make immersion gradual and close with reflection. With a carefully sequenced design, virtues stop being abstract concepts and become something students have actually done.

Agustina Ortelli is coach and coordinator of the student well-being programme at Universidad Austral.

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