SLS-7a1 The UGC Teaching Award Grant

The 2016 UGC Teaching Award includes a grant of HKD $450,000 that the Ngai-Chan team used to develop and run a staff development program for the community of university academics across Hong Kong, and not just for PolyU. What was proposed was a Service-Learning Development Program (SLDP) to share the PolyU SL experience with the wider higher education community in Hong Kong.  The target recipients are the community of university academics across Hong Kong’s eight UGC-funded institutions.  The objectives were to (1) increase the number of staff with the expertise required to design, lead and assess SL courses, and (2) to establish an SL community of practice among Hong Kong education faculty and staff. 

The SLDP consists of two levels of training. The course was modelled on our own staff development program offered through 2012-15. The course was conducted in the summer in 2017, 2018 and 2019.  The course itself has three components.  The first is a 3-hour eLearning module that covers the theory and pedagogy of SL. The second component is a multi-day workshop series at PolyU, covering the three major components of academic SL: (a) teaching of academic concepts underpinning the SL subject, (b) the execution of service projects fir a target community with the appropriate academic content, and (c) learning through reflection on the SL experience.  It will also involve preparation for the field work to be carried out subsequently, such as the provision of information on the cultural background of the target community, the technical content and risk management.  

The Third component is the field work in Cambodia, where PolyU maintains a large presence and several team works on a variety of projects each summer, from information technology installation and training to vision screening, health promotion, language teaching and hospitality education. This is arguably the most valuable, where participants can experience SL first hand, try out what they have learned through reading and discussions, and design new projects.  The SLDP participants observe the students carrying our their SL projects in the field.  They meet with the SL subject teachers to better understand how frontline teachers plan and supervise the projects.  They are offered the opportunity to sit in selected reflection sessions to observe how these delicate interactions unfold.  They will visit NGO partners with experience working with higher education institutions.  To give the participants a first hand experience  of some of the complexities of real-life SL and the support needed for the students, they carry out their own projects with guidance from our teaching team.  Thought out the whole process, each of the participants is asked to develop a proposal for a new SL course or project. As they go through the field work, observing the students, meeting with the teachers and NGOs, and carry out their own projects, they flesh our their own proposal.  By the end of the field work component, they have developed a proposal that they can present to the rest of the class, and collect feedback from the class as well as the course teachers.  

After running three cohorts, each of roughly 15-20 participants, we have built up a sizeable community of SL practitioners.  We are also very pleased to have witnessed a number of SL courses and projects produced by the participants themselves at their own institutions.  The community has kept in touch through social media, attendance at workshops and conferences organised at some of the institutions, etc.  Some have even gathered together to bid successfully for a major grant from the University grants Community to further strengthen the capacity of university academics in Hong Kong to teach and research on SL.  The SL movement is gathering speed in Hong Kong. 

One of the pleasant surprises through tis project is that we have been able to accommodate a number of participants from outside Hong Kong.  Since this program was designed for academics from Hong Kong, we did not promote it beyond Hong Kong.  Nevertheless we have a lot of partners in relevant SL projects in various parts of Asia and many of them displayed interest in this course when they hear of it.  We ended up taking in a few people from Mainland China, Philippines and Vietnam to the course.  They have enjoyed the course and we have been in communication ever since.