Internationalisation and global learning are important learning outcomes in higher education, and an increasing amount of resources are poured into learning programs that facilitate global learning, such as student exchange or study tours.

Service-learning is a well-researched pedagogy that is known to be effective at nurturing students’ civic learning. Considering that many service-learning projects require students to cross socio-economic boundaries, including those of race, ethnicity and/or culture, and some projects even bring students offshore to serve, it makes sense to wonder whether service-learning could also be a vehicle to promote students’ global learning and Internationalisation.

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University has been running a large offshore service-learning program for several years. Prior to COVID-19, almost 1000 students travelled away from home to serve communities from mainland China to Cambodia to Rwanda. This effort has continued with online international service-learning after COVID-19 put restrictions onto student and teacher mobility programs. Do students learn intercultural competencies and global citizenship through these programmes? What are some of the inherent challenges to teaching and measuring global learning in the context of service-learning? This talk will explore some of these issues and present our experiences and findings. 

Date:	4 April 2022
Time:	18:00 – 19:00 (Hong Kong SAR time, UTC+8)
Venue:	Online via Zoom

Moderator:

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

Speakers:

• 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