Service-Learning is well-known as an effective pedagogy for nurturing students’ civic awareness and social responsibility, and it is very common to find service-learning programmes in higher education institutions. However, most of these programmes are voluntary. Though they have been found to be impactful on students’ learning, students who participate of their own volition may already be somewhat civically inclined.

Less is known about the impacts of mandatory service-learning. Is it possible to mandate civic awareness and empathy? Will forcing students to serve the community backfire? Or, is civic learning no different from the common language, or mathematics requirement, which ensure that even students who are weak in language or maths achieve a basic level of competency?

In 2012, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University took the bold step in instituting a service-learning requirement for all undergraduate students. Today, ten years later, this programme reaches a total of almost 5,000 students annually. Students learn about a social issue and a potential solution, are prepared with the skills and expertise to execute their service project, spend 40 hours in direct service to the community, and are facilitated to reflect and learn from the experience.

This talk presents the results of two studies on this service-learning requirement: (1) how does such a requirement impact students, in particular, the less-inclined ones; and (2) whether this requirement have a lasting impact after graduation.

Date:	21 March 2022
Time:	18:00 – 19:00 (Hong Kong time/ UTC+8)
Venue:	Online via Zoom

Moderator:

Prof. Daniel T. L. Shek, Associate Vice President (Undergraduate Programme), The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Speaker:

• Dr Grace Ngai, Head, Service-Learning and Leadership Office, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
• Dr Stephen C.F. Chan, Consultant and former Head, Service-Learning and Leadership Office, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University