This book examines service-learning - a valuable means of promoting civic engagement and youth leadership in students by enabling them to apply their knowledge to needy people in the community. It describes selected service-learning projects in different areas by highlighting the subjects being offered, service site(s), completed service projects, evaluation findings and teachers' reflections. Although service-learning has increased tremendously in the West, its development in different Chinese societies is still in its infancy. As such, this book provides valuable insights on the implementation and future directions of the service-learning movement in China by documenting lessons learned and sharing success stories. It also discusses related evaluation findings and impacts on students to show that service-learning can increase students' empathy, social awareness, social responsibility and psychosocial skills and as a result can improve their quality of life. In addition, the book highlights how service-learning activities promote the well-being of the clients and communities being served. It also stimulates thinking and sharpens the thoughts of educators, administrators and those who wish to promote the quality of life of students and service recipients through service-learning.
Daniel T.L. Shek (PhD, FHKPS, BBS, SBS, JP) is the Chair Professor of Applied Social Sciences at the Department of Applied Social Sciences and Associate Vice President (Undergraduate Programme) of Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He has taught social work students at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels for over thirty years. He was Dean of Students (1996-1998) and Dean of General Education (2006-2008) at New Asia College, the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Youth Studies and Applied Research on Quality of Life and serves on the editorial board of many international refereed journals including Social Indicators Research and Journal of Adolescent Health. To date, he has published over 85 books, 154 book chapters and more than 500 articles in international refereed journals.
Dr. Chan received his PhD from The University of Rochester, where he was a member of the Production Automation Project under Professor Herbert Voelcker. He then worked on a NURBS-based surface modeling system for industrial design for Neo-Visuals in Toronto. Subsequently he became a research officer for the National Research Council of Canada on computer-integrated manufacturing and represented Canada in the development of the international product data exchange standard, STEP. He joined the then Hong Kong Polytechnic in 1993. Dr. Chan is a firm believer of service learning. He has taken students to service projects in Hong Kong, Hubei and Gansu in mainland China, Cambodia, Myanmar and Rwanda. Together with Dr. Vincent Ng and Dr. Grace Ngai, he was given the Faculty of Engineering Award (Team) in Teaching in 2007. Together with several other colleagues, he was given the President’s Award (Team) in Services in 2008. He was appointed the founding head of the Office of Service-Learning in 2012.
Dr. Ngai received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from Johns Hopkins University in 2001. Her thesis supervisor was Professor David Yarowsky. Prior to that, she studied Engineering at Brown University, where she got her Sc.B. She also got her M.S.E. (Masters of Science in Engineering) at JHU along the way to getting her Ph.D. Dr. Ngai’s main research interest is in human-centered computing, including Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Affective Computing. Specifically, she is interested in how humans use computers, the interplay between culture and computing, the aspect of computing that interacts back at the human, and computing that interacts with the environment. Dr Ngai’s other research interests are in computational linguistics and statistical natural language processing. She is also very interested in computing education and educational technology.
