Abstract
Service-Learning (S-L) became a graduation requirement in Lingnan University in 2016–2017. Although many studies revealed that S-L impacts students’ learning positively, these studies have focused on the responses of S-L participants only. Because there is a very limited body of prior comparative studies, we considered that a control group study, which investigated both S-L and non-S-L students, would provide a robust source of additional evidence about the impact of S-L on students’ development. A pretest and posttest based nonequivalent groups control group design was adopted in this study to investigate differences in developmental outcomes among students who engaged in S-L versus those who did not. A total of 81 S-L students and 53 non-S-L students in three selected S-L credit-bearing courses were invited to complete the pretest and posttest questionnaires in 2017/2018 and 2018/2019. A significant difference in problem-solving skills was identified between the experimental and control groups.
Keywords
- Control group study
- Problem solving skills
- Service-learning
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Cross-institutional Capacity Building for Service-Learning in Hong Kong Higher Education Institutions (Project No.: PolyU4/T&L/16-19).
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Chan, C.W.F., Snell, R.S., Chan, C.W.Y. (2022). Investigating Service-Learning Impacts on University Students’ Developmental Outcomes Through a Control Group Study. In: Ngai, G., Shek, D.T. (eds) Service-Learning Capacity Enhancement in Hong Kong Higher Education. Quality of Life in Asia, vol 14. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-2437-8_9
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