Evaluation of Service-Learning Subjects under COVID-19

APSS has offered two Service-Learning subjects in different sites in mainland China. The first one is APSS2S05 (Promotion of Children and Adolescent Development) which attempts to nurture university students’ generic competences, positive values, social responsibility, and sense of care through designing and providing services for underprivileged children in Shanghai and Hangzhou. The second subject is APSS2S09 (Service Leadership through Serving Children and Families with Special Needs) which attempts to promote students’ service leadership qualities, including competence, character and care, and social responsibility through serving socially deprived primary school students in Chengdu and Xian.

Because of the pandemic in 2020 and 2021, SL activities in these offshore Service-Learning sites were conducted online. As there are few studies on online Service-Learning, we have to answer several questions: 1) What are the impacts of online SL programs on PolyU students? 2) What are the perceptions of the service recipients on the online SL programs, including service, instructors and benefits? 3) What are the feedbacks of the collaborators on the online SL programs? In this project, we utilized the data collected in summer of 2020 and 2021 based on objective outcome evaluation, subjective outcome evaluation, and qualitative evaluation to answer the above research questions.