Evaluation of Service-Learning in Project WeCan under COVID-19 in a Chinese Context.

Hildie Leung,Diya Dou,Daniel T. L. Shek

doi:10.3390/ijerph18073596

Abstract

Service-learning is a widely adopted educational pedagogy and philosophy. With the support from the Wharf (Holdings) Limited (Group), service-learning was conducted in the “Project WeCan” in Hong Kong. Prior to COVID-19, traditional service-learning was implemented with students learning in the classroom and applying their knowledge and skills to the community through providing direct face-to-face service. With the COVID-19 outbreak in the 2019–20 academic year, school lockdown measures appeared. Students had to learn online and to design and implement service offsite. As the impacts of this rapid shift in paradigm remain unknown, this study examined changes in university students using a pretest–posttest design (n = 124) and perceptions of service-learning experience via the subjective outcome evaluation design (n = 192) under COVID-19. The authors also investigated service recipients’ (n = 56) satisfaction with service activities they participated in during the pandemic. Both objective outcome evaluation and subjective outcome evaluation findings revealed that service providers (university students) and recipients (secondary school students) experienced benefits from the Project. Findings support the benefits of online service-learning in “Project WeCan” even during unprecedented times such as COVID-19.

Highlights

Service-learning (SL) has been a widely-adopted teaching philosophy and pedagogy in the United States for many decades
We addressed the following: Research Question 2: What are the perceptions of the university students on the SL courses delivered under COVID-19? based on existing literature [20], we expected that university students would have positive perceptions regarding the SL course (Hypothesis 2)
Besides gauging views from the service providers, we examined the views of the service recipients, which have been rarely examined in the literature: Research Question 3: What are the views of the secondary school students on the SL services in Project Wiccan delivered under COVID-19? Consistent with previous findings [21], we predicted that the majority of the service recipients would perceive the Project in a positive manner (Hypothesis 3)

Summary

Introduction

Service-learning (SL) has been a widely-adopted teaching philosophy and pedagogy in the United States for many decades. SL is a credit-bearing experiential learning process where students apply what they have learned from academic studies (i.e., both knowledge and skills) to benefit the community by providing service to those in need [1]. Through SL, community stakeholders benefit from the services provided by students and educational outcomes are attained through critical reflective activities [2]. At the beginning of 2020, COVID-19 was formally regarded as a pandemic [5]. Governments and tertiary institutions worldwide launched initiatives and provided guidelines to continue teaching activities while minimizing the spread of the virus [8,9]

Results

Discussion

Conclusion