Service-Learning is an experiential approach aimed at developing personal, professional (subject-specific), and civic and democratic competencies of students. It integrates meaningful community service or engagement into the curriculum, offering students academic credit for the learning that derives from active participation within the community and work on a real-world problem. Based on developing a sense of community responsibility (SOC-R) [4], SL should support students’ capacity to act effectively and responsibly for the collective well-being. Reflection and experiential learning strategies underpin the learning process, and the service is linked to the academic discipline [5]. SL contributes to students’ “reality check” and competencies mobilization and development by offering the opportunity to articulate learning through reflections and engaging in real-world issues. Service-Learning benefits for students range from personal/transferable competencies (self-efficacy; adaptability) to democratic competencies (understanding of social issues) to disciplinary ones (academic performance) [6,7,8,9].

Nevertheless, defining transferable and democratic competencies is not an easy task. Transferable skills are also referred to as competence for life, key competence, and generic competence [10]. According to the Council of Europe [11], they identify knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed by all for personal fulfillment and development, employability, social inclusion, and active citizenship. The Council of Europe has also defined democratic competence within the Reference Framework of Competencies for Democratic Culture (RFCDC) [12]. They identify a set of attitudes, values, skills, and knowledge that need to be acquired by learners to participate effectively in a culture of democracy and live peacefully together with others in culturally diverse democratic societies and to feel a sense of belonging and make their positive contributions to the democratic societies in which they live. In line with the RFCDC, the OECD [13] (p. 4) promotes the acquiring of a global perspective in examining local, global, and intercultural issues, interacting successfully and respectfully with others while taking responsible action toward collective well-being. Building on the proposed global competence framework, the OECD stresses the relevance of competencies assessment.

Democracy is a form of governance responsive to the views of the majority, and that requires citizens’ commitment to participate actively in the public good. The Council of Europe’s White Paper on Intercultural Dialogue [14] points out that democratic and intercultural competencies are not acquired automatically by citizens but, instead, need to be learned and practiced. Education is uniquely positioned to guide and support learners—as citizens—in this and empower them. Educational Institutions can help learners develop in the acquirement of the competencies they need to become active and autonomous participants in democracy, intercultural dialogue, and society, giving them the tools to craft their own scopes while respecting human rights, the dignity of others, and democratic processes [12].

According to Barrett [15] (p. 9), democratic competence can be defined as “the ability to select, activate, organize, and apply relevant psychological resources in order to respond appropriately and effectively to the demands, challenges, and opportunities that are presented by democratic situations”. This competence should be perceived in dynamic terms as competent individuals will mobilize and use psychological resources dynamically and fluidly, self-regulating their behavior and adjusting it according to situational circumstances.

Democratic competencies include skills, knowledge and understanding, and values and attitudes, regarded as essential for behaving appropriately and effectively in democratic and intercultural situations. Values and attitudes are considered psychological resources that can be activated, organized, and applied through behavior to respond appropriately and effectively in democratic and intercultural situations [12].

Even if the learning capacity of SL is embedded in hands-on, experiential learning in the community, online SL learning has been developed to deal with those situations in which face-to-face SL is not practicable. Waldner et al. [16] identified different ways of online SL. They included (a) hybrid forms where: the instructional part is online and the service part is offline, or vice versa (type I and type II, respectively); and the instructional part and service are partially online and partially offline (type III); and (b) an extreme online SL type (XE-SL; type IV), where both instructional and service parts take place online.

Many scholars claim that the benefits of eSL and XE-SL for students are equivalent to offline “traditional” SL [17], while others identify additional benefits, including accessibility, cost reduction, and capacity to reach diverse communities [18].

Among benefits, eSL is reported to stimulate students’ teamwork competency [19], social justice and civic attitudes [20], learning engagement, gradual increment in emotional engagement during XE-SL experiences, starting from the initial uncertainty and mixed feelings to final positive emotions [21], and life satisfaction even during challenging situations such as the COVID-19 pandemic [22]. According to the literature, eSL can facilitate the application of textbook knowledge to solve actual problems while fostering more university-to-community relationships and extending the university’s reach with the geographic dispersion of the online student populations [23]. Moreover, removing geographical constraints is reported to facilitate (virtual) mobility, offering students the opportunity to develop global awareness of social issues [21,24].

However, with few exceptions, the literature on eSL benefits for students is anecdotal [16]. Faulconer [25] reviewed the papers published between 2010 and 2020 on type II and IV SL (where service takes place online) and found that few studies described how students were assessed on their eService-Learning activities. Only one reported using rubrics to evaluate transferable skills [10]. Faulconer [25] (p. 15) concluded that assessment was largely overlooked in the research of eService-Learning, possibly because it still represents a challenge in SL. She suggested using mixed-methods research to understand better how to evaluate and assess eService-Learning projects.

The problem of online teaching and learning assessment is not exclusively limited to eSL. In a systematic review of 262 studies conducted in 2020 during the “global online semester” to analyze students’ learning experiences during the pandemic, Bond et al. [26] highlighted how limited attention was devoted to learning outcomes assessment stressing the relevance of further exploration.

Outcomes-based assessment is imperative in programs such as Service-Learning, that build on university–community partnership. Learning outcomes, indeed, indicate to faculty, students, and the community the specific results expected from participation in the program [27] and shape the collaborative design of SL courses between faculty and community partners.

Moreover, given that the learning dimension of SL relies heavily on hands-on experience in the community, understanding how the online emergency shift affected the capacity of XE-SL to achieve its learning objectives (i.e., developing personal, transferable, and democratic competencies) is of utmost relevance.