The Effectiveness of E-Service-Learning on Student Developmental Outcomes during COVID-19 : Comparison against the Traditional Service-Learning

COVID-19 accelerates the adoption of e-learning for different types of curriculums, including experiential learning such as service-learning (SL), however its effectiveness and success factors are still under-researched. Using the mixed method, this study reveals the effectiveness of e-service-learning (E-SL) and its good practices, by contrasting the student developmental outcomes between the traditional face-to-face SL and E-SL. This paper compares two different cohorts of students in a Hong Kong university who took the same credit-bearing undergraduate management course under the same setting, including instructor, curriculum, and assessment criteria, but engaged in traditional SL and E-SL in different academic years. They rated on various developmental outcomes based on their perception with a self-reporting quantitative measurement instrument before and after SL experience. Qualitative method was also employed to analyze students’ learning artefacts, to explain differences in student developmental outcomes between the two cohorts and identified any good practices for E-SL. Results show that a significant enhancement in student developmental outcomes arise from SL experience for both cohorts. Despite no significant difference between the two cohorts regarding the effectiveness of enhancing student developmental outcomes, E-SL appears to slightly outperform traditional SL. The qualitative analysis has also generated various good practices, such as stakeholders’ commitment and students’ constant reflection, from which students could flip the challenges posed by the online environment in E-SL into learning opportunities facilitating their performance.