Higher education research has demonstrated the positive effects of service-learning on students, with particular attention to the increased attaintment of institutional outcomes such as retention and graduation. However, traditional assessment models, focused on measuring outcomes, offer few strategies for developing a holistic understanding of service learning environments. In response, this article outlines the process of heuristic tracing, a generative assessment strategy, which can be used to make visible the experiences that can not only support students’ learning gains but also value the engagement of all service learning participants—including instructors and community partners. Heuristic tracing can help stakeholders better understand the habits, attitudes, and experiences of learning that are central to service learning pedagogy.

Many community stakeholders are experiencing increased pressure to enter the digital arena in order to be heard by new audiences, but many such stakeholders lack the technical expertise to do so. To meet this demand, some service-learning teachers are turning to digital media production as a new method of service. This approach to a service-learning pedagogy brings with it inherent complications, however. We believe these complications call for a re-orientation of service-learning projects around a model of distributed knowledge work. This model asks students to view themselves as budding professionals entering into community networks that preexist them. It also requires students to deeply share their knowledge-making practices with community stakeholders.

This article draws on an archival case study of the Comisión Femenil Mexicana Nacional (CFMN). Building on my experience as an activist and working in communities and institutions, I argue that it is valuable to examine and translate the histories and practices of organizations like the CFMN to learn the rhetorical abilities we need to operate and make collective change as both part of and outside of publics and institutions. To make this argument, I analyze how Chicanas of the CFMN incited change by writing, theorizing, and making an identity through what might be considered mundane and programmatic writing.