SLS-8 Research

Research is a critical element of a credible service-learning program.  At the least, we need to know how much of the intended learning outcomes have been achieved by the students, and how much impact have been achieved in the community.  Have the students gained better understanding of social issues?  Are they better in applying their academic knowledge in solving real world problems?  Have they become more emphatic and passionate towards others?   Are they inclined to be more socially engaged? Are their work bringing sustainable benefit to the community?   

Beyond these obvious questions on visible outcomes, we also need to know how these are achieved.  What pedagogies are effective in facilitating these outcomes?  What features are not effective?  What is the mechanism in play in the process?  These general questions have to be asked in order for anyone to improve their program, to achieve greater impact.  

There are also questions on features that are specific to our own program, that may be of particular interest to us, but which can also be useful for others who are considering similar measures or facing similar challenges.  Our program is compulsory - all undergraduates are required to take at least one service-learning subject.  How does that impact on the students’ motivation, performance, and learning outcome?  We have two fairly different types of service-learning courses.  Students can take a SL course in their own discipline (discipline-specific), applying relatively advanced skills in their own discipline to address society issues.  They can also take a SL course in another discipline, as general education, to broaden their education while addressing social issues.  How do these different approaches compare?   Our program invests heavily on international, cross-cultural SL, making available a lot of opportunities for students to be involved.  Is it really achieving the dual purpose of SL and internationalisation at the same time?   We purposely integrate leadership education in many SL courses.  Does it work?  Are SL and leadership education truly complementary and strengthen each other?  Overall, does SL making a lasting impact on our students in the long run?  Are we truly successfully embedding responsible citizenship as our core value?  

As discussed earlier, we started researching on some these questions as soon as the SL program was launched in 2011.  And we had already had some encouraging results by the time the first batch of students graduated in 2016.  But those were necessarily preliminary results.  Our research team was small and inexperienced.  We did not have the resources to mount large scale, in depth studies.  The Office of Service-Learning was actually discouraged by some to engage in research - ostensibly because it was considered a non-academic unit.  We found the rigid differentiation between academic and non-academic units artificial, unnecessarily restrictive and unhelpful.  We realised we had to push harder for SL at PolyU to get better.  We started to apply for research and teaching development grants.  We started seeking collaboration within and outside our university to research on some of these important questions.