Abstract:
Since 2011, co-curricular learning as part of the total learning experiences in the new 335 curriculum of the Hong Kong Institute of Education has been implemented for enhancing students’ knowledge and skills. The innovative design of the co-curricular courses consists of the use of service learning as the pedagogical strategy for enhancing students’ active participation and the transfer of knowledge and skills from classroom setting to practical real contexts. This is indeed a kind of new learning which is found complementary to the traditional subject disciplinary knowledge acquisition and will serve the purpose of fulfilling the learning needs of students. The aim of this project is to explore how students’ learning outcomes can be enhanced through co-curricular design embracing the pedagogical use of service learning in a Hong Kong higher education context. Three co-curricular courses are selected for conducting the innovation in this project. Evaluation measures including qualitative and quantitative tools which are adopted for collecting feedbacks from students and supervisors. In particular, the questionnaire will serve as the assessment tool for measuring students’ learning outcomes with reference to the Institutional goals in co-curricular learning and total learning experiences. The outcome of the project is expected to have significant impacts on students in the new 335 curriculum.
Code:
T0145
Principal Project Supervisors:
Keywords provided by authors:
Start Date:
01 Aug 2014
End Date:
31 Jul 2015
Status:
Completed
Result:
A sample of students in the Hong Kong Institute of Education who enrolled in the co-curricular learning courses in 2014-15 was invited to participate in the study. Pre-posttest surveys were administered to track participants’ development of self-management ability and self-awareness in one semester’s time. Interviews were conducted for students, tutors and service supervisors after the course work had ended. The quantitative data found that co-curricular activities which were adopted in the courses, regardless of service or non-service learning in nature, have helped to improve undergraduates’ self-management ability, while students’ self-awareness ability was kept unchanged. Influential elements, namely, meaningful experience, reflection, diversity, youth voice, link to curriculum, were reported to have moderate or marginal correlations with self-management and self-awareness. On the other hand, the qualitative data revealed that participants in both of the co-curricular and service-learning courses were all satisfied with the opportunities that allowed them to improve their interpersonal communication skills and self-management capabilities. It was also agreed that participation in service-learning was beneficial to students’ personal development as they could test their learned knowledge in the real world setting as well as to identify their own areas of improvement.
Impact:
The project enables students' opportunities in learning in wider local community contexts through the implementation of co-curricular courses after the introduction of the new 334 curriculum. This project is able to show that students have deeveloped generic skills and attitudes in real social settings and further convert knowledge learnt from calssrooms to practical experiential knowledge skills which will have a long term impact on individuals' life long learning.
Deliverable
Chan Kin Sang Jacqueline and Xu Huixuan. (2017) Developing Undergraduates’ Self-management and Self-awareness Abilities Through Service-Learning. In Kong S., Wong T., Yang M., Chow C., Tse K. (eds) Emerging Practices in Scholarship of Learning and Teaching in a Digital Era. Springer, Singapore. (ISBN 978-981-10-3344-5) https://www.springer.com/us/book/9789811033421#
Financial Year:
2013-14
Type:
TDG