Developing undergraduates' self-management and self-awareness abilities through service-learning

Abstract

This chapter contributes to knowledge about the relationship between service-learning and undergraduates' personal development, particularly in the areas of self-management and self-awareness. Students who enrolled in cocurricular learning courses in 2014-2015 at the Education University of Hong Kong were invited to participate in the study. Pre- and post-test surveys were administered to track participants' development of self-management ability and self-awareness during the course of a semester. It was found that cocurricular activities adopted in the courses, regardless of service or non-service-learning in nature, have helped to improve undergraduates' self-management abilities. However, students' self-awareness abilities remained unchanged. Influential elements, namely meaningful experience, reflection, diversity, youth voice, and link to curriculum, were reported to have moderate or marginal correlations with self-management and self-awareness. Possible reasons and implications on the cocurricular course development were elaborated and discussed.