Teaching development grants final and financial report: Enhancing students' learning through co-curricular design and service learning in Hong Kong higher education

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.