Service-Learning Impacts on Students and Career Development from Graduates’ Perspectives

Most research on S-L in Hong Kong has featured current undergraduates. This research involved alumni. In the quantitative part, we adopted a quasi-experimental design, comparing Lingnan University (LU) alumni with and without S-L experience. LU alumni with S-L experience reported positive impacts on civic responsibility, career exploration, and research skills, as compared with LU alumni without S-L experience. Although no statistically significant differences were found in terms of self-reported levels of communication skills, organization skills, social competence and problem solving, the fact that the experimental group was significantly younger and had correspondingly less work experience, suggests that S-L experience also has positive impacts on these attributes. In the qualitative part, LU alumni with S-L experience offered suggestions about how to improve S-L project quality.