Abstract
Being highlighted in the CUHK 2025 Strategic Plan, service learning (SL) is a three-win situation for the university, students, and community. SL allows students and teachers to apply their knowledge and skills to meet the community’s needs and gaining further understanding of course content and improvements in the pedagogy design in return. As credit-bearing service learning courses is one of the major foci in the upcoming university policy and will be put into the compulsory undergraduate requirement in the long term, equipping teachers and faculty members with sufficient SL knowledge is of utmost importance in promoting SL as well as putting different enormous ideas of SL into practice. The objectives of the current proposal includes: (1) preparation of a handbook; and (2) an interactive and informative platform about SL. The handbook provides (1a) course design and assessment guidelines, and (1b) safety guidelines for outreach programs. The platform provides (2a) a series of events such as training workshops for teachers to get to know SL, the needs of the community, and (2b) an interactive webpage includes a Q&A session about SL, consultation services for SL course planning, and information of funding opportunities for SL courses. The handbook will be posted on the webpage.
Brief write-up
Project objectives
The objectives of this project included 1) preparation of a service-learning (SL) handbook, and 2) develop an interactive and informative SL platform.
Activities, process and outcomes
We have completed the first version of SL handbook and prepared a website framework. It will be one of the categories within “Learning Enhancement” section in CLEAR’s website.
We collaborated with Department of Social Work and co-organize a series of 4 workshops in June 2022, covering topics of pedagogic design and community needs. We have invited CUHK teaching staff and staff from other universities who might be interested in SL.
Deliverables and evaluation
We have prepared the first version of SL handbook and framework of interactive website, as well as 4 workshops as planned. Due to the pandemic, we were not able to disseminate the quantitative survey in campus before February 2022 as we planned. We decided to invite our workshop participants to conduct the survey and evaluate the workshop outcome and their attitude change towards SL after the workshop instead.
Dissemination, diffusion, impact and sharing of good practices
We have collaborated with Department of Social Work for preparation of SL handbook and co-organized the SL workshops. We worked closely with the team of Mr Wong Kon-chi and we are grateful to develop a cross department collaboration relationship through this project. The SL platform developed would also serve a channel to disseminate SL information to colleagues.
Impact on teaching and learning
Service-learning is one of the key strategic goals of
CUHK 2025. We believe the SL platform, workshops and handbook will provide insightful content and are important in addressing concerns of teachers on SL.
