SLS-9b From OSL to SLLO

Service-Learning and Leadership were adopted as twin pillars of the General University Requirement in late 2010, to come into effect with the first cohort of 4-year undergraduate programs who entered PolyU in 2012.  The Leadership courses develop a student’s personal attributes while service-learning develop the social aspects. complementing each other.   While we were teaching the service-learning courses, we became more convinced that a student needs leadership skills to succeed in service-learning.  On the other hand, service-learning provides a perfect platform to practice and internalise leadership skills and attitudes.  

Leadership is certainly a useful skill when the students work in a team, particularly when that team is composed of students who do not know each other, who come from different academic disciplines, and perhaps even nationalities, ethnic and cultural background.  It is needed when they tackle an open-ended social problem without clear boundaries nor rules in the reality of the messy real world - as opposed to clearly defined problems  with closed-ended solutions carefully-constructed by their professors in the classroom.  It is particularly relevant when they deal with flesh-and-blood people with real needs, expectations and vulnerabilities, without the required resources and finances, but with serious consequences - by definition when one is dealing with disadvantaged people.  On the flip side, service-learning provides the ideal setting to test and validate concepts and skills learned academically in classrooms.  It also builds confidence through experience, hopefully small failures, and overcoming challenges.  In the process students discover themselves, develop their own leadership models and build character.  

Equally importantly, the experience gave us teachers the motivation and confidence to integrate leadership education with service-learning. This results partially from necessity.  We need to teach planning, communication, coordination, and negotiation skills that facilitate team work.  We need to teach understanding, accommodation and reconciliation of diverse viewpoints to deal with the real world of social issues.  We need to guide the students in synthesising diverse contributions to formulate effective actions and solutions. Hence, gradually we experiment with projects, courses, and programs with integrate service-learning and leadership education together.  The success of these actions gave us the confidence not only that we can capable of the integration, and that the integration is fruitful.  

In the mean time, we are also increasingly internationalising service-learning. This is internationalization in the sense of dealing purposefully with diverse nationalities, languages, cultural traditions and practices, religious faiths, political systems, economic systems and more. Even within the small physical space of Hong Kong, these challenges are increasingly obvious and pertinent, in the form of ethnic minorities who settled here a long time ago, recent immigration, cross-border travel, commerce and employment, influx of refugees, …   Service-learning has also proven to be very attractive, challenging, and powerful both in terms of student learning and community impact.  

Another dimensions that has become more obvious is the role of technology.  PolyU has a very rich science and technology heritage.  More than half of our academic programs are in science and technology.  A majority of our service-learning are technology-driven, or the service is enhanced by significant use of technology, or the teaching/service is facilitated by the use of technology, particularly digital technology.    There is a natural intersection between digital technology and leadership - digital leadership!  More will be discussed subsequently.    

 

Around 2018, while PolyU was engaged in the process of re-writing the Strategic Plan, the management was also considering the positioning of a small team under the office of the Vice-President for Student Development, Prof. Angelina Yuen, which had been working on projects on leadership training in the international context.  The team, led by Ms. Helena Au, had been trying to incorporate some form of service-learning into their projects and share some common objectives with the Office of Service-Learning.  In the end, it was decided to incorporate the team into OSL and rename the office as Service-Learning and Leadership Office, to reflect the expanded scope of the office.