SLS-4b1 Explosion - Balancing Quantity with Quality

From the beginning, there was intense pressure to develop a large number of new SL subjects and to increase capacity quickly.  At the same time, there was also acute awareness of the need to maintain the academic quality and stress on impactful service projects.  It is relatively easy and thus tempting to focus on quickly developing subjects that are mostly academic studies with a light element of community service - which can be indirect service or desk research.  In fact, that is the path taken by some universities that wish to implement service-learning in a large scale quickly.  Some would take an existing academic subject and add a small community service/study project, requiring only a few hours of work.  Some would consider the time spent in preparing for the actual service as part of the service itself - hence inflating the number of hours dedicated to the service project.  Such subjects could be fairly useful if the students are already experienced in community service.   However, set against the lack of a culture of civic engagement in the education system in Hong Kong, it would not be very helpful in cultivating empathy, compassion and civic engagement.   Putting out a large number of such subjects would deliver service-learning in name without achieving the spirit.  It may even be quite damaging when they students delude themselves that they are socially engaged - when it is nothing more than an intellectual exercise.  Astute educators and observers will see through the ruse easily. 

Academic studies may inform students cognitively of social needs; but true compassion and commitment is much more effectively achieved through accompanying emotional investment - such as achieved through purposely arranged, extended person-to-person, direct interaction. Hence effective service-learning requires a significant amount of time involved in personal interactions with the people in need.  We have to resist the temptation of taking the easier way out.  

Having decided to take the harder, narrower and less travelled but ultimately more satisfying path, we must provide strong encouragement and assistance to the academic departments to come up with a sufficient number of quality SL subjects.  Hence the OSL work hard to assist the subject proposers in writing viable proposals, particularly in designing suitable projects and finding partners.  The sub-committee worked hard to provide detailed comments to the proposals received.  Based on these comments, the OSL and members of the sub-committee meet with the proposers to assist them in revising the proposals.  The process can cycle through a number of iterations.  

The process is so strenuous to some that one successful proposer was heard to  remark that it was harder to a SL subject proposal accepted than to secure a competitive earmarked research grant from the University Grants Committee - the governmental funding agency.  It is most likely an exaggeration born out of some genuine frustration.  The actual success rate of SL subject proposals is quite high, compared to other general education subject proposals.  The perception of difficulty is possibly partly the result of an iterative process of comment - revision that can take several rounds.  The sub-committee actually seldom rejects a proposal outright as not suitable.  It tries to identify elements that can be developed into a proper subjects.  Sometime it succeeds, sometimes it does not.  

The rigour is necessary in establishing the academic quality and reputation of SL subjects.  This insistence of academic quality is important particularly in view of one of the major original objections to SL - that SL was not a suitable academic worthy of academic credit.  It is gratifying to note that this argument is seldom heard now, after the program has been running for a few years.  The positive results are evident through the rigour of the process, the impact on the students, the perception of the community inside and outside of the university, support and commendations from stake holders, and international benchmarking.