Along the way, we have also discovered that SL can be much more than that. In the first place, SL can help us change from a relatively fixed and closed mindset to a more fluid and open mindset. Normally, academics teach a fairly fixed set of courses with a defined syllabus. Occasionally, we have an opportunity to revise the syllabus, or design a new course, depending on the developments in our discipline. In SL, we have much more reasons for change - opportunities to look for suitable social issues and needs that we can address with our disciplinary expertise. Surely, once we get started, one can still choose to teach the same SL course and assign the same project to the students again and again. But there is really a very wide range of social issues to choose from, communities and partners to work with, and solutions to adopt. Real world problems are rarely fixed and cleanly defined. They challenge us to come up with innovative solutions, and refine the solutions as we gain experience.
SL also challenge us, as teachers and students, to ground academic knowledge in the real world, when we try to solve these real world problems. Through trying to develop solutions, students achieve a much better sense of how their chosen discipline in specific, and their university education in general, is relevant (or not) to the world. Often, after taking a SL course, students come back and say they are now more motivated to do well in their studies, so that they can better tackle the community’s problems, providing better solutions. Others become most purposeful in their studies, knowing better how the academic knowledge is relevant to the real world. While learning to be better citizens, they also become better professionals in their own disciplines.
SL naturally complements and strengthens cross-cultural learning and internationalisation. SL is, by definition, cross-boundary, where the boundary can be economical, age, physical ability, language, ethnic, national, or otherwise - making it cross-cultural in some form. This is evident in almost any Sl course, whether it is young students serving the elderly two generations removed, Chinese students serving migrant workers from Philippines and refugees from Sri Lanka or Congo, … It is also well known that big cross-boundary challenges are correlated with strong learning gains in SL. Hence the increasing popularity of international SL. Surely international SL is resource-intensive, in terms of finances, personnel, and risk management. But the impact is obvious and potentially tremendous.
SL, particularly international SL, needs and strengthens international collaboration, between universities as well as universities and non-governmental organisations. The benefits have to be, obviously, mutual in order to be sustainable. These relationships can become platforms for other forms of collaboration: student exchange, collaborative teaching in other subjects, research. Many such examples abound in this book.
SL can stimulate cross-discipline collaboration in teaching and research. Real world problems are rarely one-dimensional. Poor health, unclean water, poor diet, poverty, lack of jobs, …, are not separate issues but are highly correlated. A civil engineering team may work on filtration to provide cleaner water, a public health team may then assist the village in improving sanitation with the cleaner water, a food safety or hotel management team may then advice on a healthier diet, a business management team may be able to help the villagers to set up an income-generating business to make the projects sustainable, etc. The issues also provide strong motivation for some relevant practical research. Surely, purposeful coordination and planning is needed to make it happen. But the need and potential can be easy to visualise.
SL can be a great unifier for the campus. A successful SL project often require the collaboration and support from multiple departments: the academic department offering the specific course, the academic departments where the attending students come from, the medical clinic providing advice for the location/community/country where the students serve, the finance office helping to finance the project/trip, the alumni office helping to raise the funds supporting the equipment/material/travelling, the alumni providing the actual funding, the administrators basking in the accolades received by the institution, etc. A great SL team can galvanise a campus just like a successful sports team.
Of course, none of these is automatic or inevitable. These are opportunities and it is up to us to take advantage of them. There are SL teachers who found an issue, developed a project, build a course and continue to do the same project year after year without much change. The course is not without impact - each year a new batch students learn from the same course/project, creating more impact. But it is also an opportunity lost. In this book alone, there are numerous cases in which teachers in a SL course drill into a social issue and develop better and better solutions, enriching the learning experience for successive generations of students, building up a strong bond with the community, expanding into a variety of related projects. Some have started small but gradually expanded into multiple teams for different sites. Others are expanding into multiple courses covering related but diverse topics or communities.
Similarly, there are students who take one SL course and consider it done with. There are also many who graduate to work in corporate social responsibility in their profession, work as a professional for non-profits, become a teacher of SL in their chosen discipline, build start ups aiming at a public good utilising their professional expertise, etc.
Throughout this book, it should be obvious we found many exciting opportunities of cross-cultural and international collaboration. These are very exciting for many students and staff alike. No doubt they are also very challenging in many ways and perhaps not for everyone. But they are also very stimulating, eye-opening, hugely satisfying and potentially life changing. Many of the students involved in them have since graduated to move abroad, to study, to work, to get married, and more. In te process, we have encountered numerous individuals and groups who are similarlily eager to connect. In some situations we are primarily learning from them at the beginning, but the relationship gradually change into a more balanced, reciprocal relationship. In some our partners are initially primarily learning from us; but in time, those also change into a more two-way relationship. Ultimately, all are mutually beneficial. In many cases, we create projects, pedagogies, courses, programs together. Groups form naturally and dynamically.
We found leaders every where, at all levels. At first these are usually select course leaders and project leaders. Then there are students who come up with ideas, or who stand out because of what they say or do, questions that they ask, or challenges that they pose. Administrators who ask questions and make demands or challenges. They are the drivers of change and innovations.
Hence SL can, and is becoming much more than integrating service and learning to achieve civic learning. It requires reframing of SL, from an end in itself, into a tool that can enable other important objectives for higher education. Innovative universities are already taking the steps to realise the potential of such reframing. To summarise, starting as
- a pedagogy that integrates service with learning
- to teach civic learning
Service-Learning can be reframed as a platform for
- changing from a closed, fixed mindset to an open, fluid mindset - for both staff and students
- enhancing students as professionals in their chosen discipline
- complementing cross-cultural learning and internationalization
- strengthening international collaboration
- stimulating cross-discipline collaboration
- unifying the campus
The only limitation being our own imagination.
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