SL 2010-25

n 2010, we did a self-examination (reflection) on all-rounded (whole-person) education at PolyU and found something missing.  We had always put a lot of effort in academic learning, problem solving, professional discipline expertise, and languages.  Yet there wasn’t much in terms of values, ethical thinking, and social responsibility.  We really could not claim to be educating the whole person when such an important chunk was missing. 

Some of us felt service-learning would be an effective pedagogy to begin to fill that gap.  And that gap existed in all undergraduate programs.  We therefore decided to make service-learning a critical component in all undergraduate programs - compulsory and credit-bearing.  

At that point, the challenge was daunting.  We had nothing.  Zero SL courses, and few people who knew anything about SL.  Not to mention how to teach SL.  How do we find projects?  Partners? Fund the projects?  Teach reflection?  When the teachers didn’t know how to do reflection ourselves?  What we had was plenty of doubters.  We had to bootstrap ourselves in everything. Amid all the challenges, step-by-step we learned.  

In 15 years, we have worked very hard, and come a long way.  Today 70+ SL courses are offered to 4,500 undergraduate students each year.  SL has been entrenched as a distinguishing hallmark of a PolyU education.  Close to half of that 4,500 serve outside Hong Kong, in Mainland China and foreign countries. Thus helping PolyU internationalise -  achieving another important objective.  We are conducting research to inform our teaching of SL, to continuously improve ourselves, and to contribute to the global community.  

But we are far from finished.  We want more students to acquire a global mindset, hence more non-local SL.  We are developing a minor in SL, so that students can learn SL to a greater depth.  We are planning to expand SL to the graduate school.  

We have benefited so much from SL we want to promote SL so that more can benefit.  We are training teachers from other universities, in other countries, to teach SL.  We are training K-12 teachers to teach SL.  We are designing a course to train researchers in SL.  We are learning to bring more technology into SL to create more impact.  …