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The paper analyses the connection between the civic mission of the university, higher education teaching (as one of the basic academic activities) and the education of socially responsible and active citizens. It presents one of the most current models of experiential learning at the university level, originally called service-learning. The model in question relies on the integration of the curriculum and active involvement of the students in the community with the aims of ensuring their better understanding of the academic discipline, the needs and problems of the community and encouraging their (further) civic involvement. The international academic community is increasingly regarding this model as a mechanism that successfully contributes to the realisation of certain aspects of the civic mission of the university. With the purpose of contributing to the conceptual analysis, the concepts and approaches to the definition and theoretical origins are presented. Opening the area of the discussion about the challenges of the integration of this model into higher education curriculum at our universities, the Croatian equivalent of the term service learning is offered and explained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]