Enhancing University Students' Social Responsibility Through Service Learning

Li-Jiuan Lilie Tsay and Hsiang-I Chen
Ming Chuan University

Abstract

Research found that connection between university students and local culture, for example history, is fairly low. Education can be sustained through revitalizing and remodeling the historical heritages. How to shorten the distance between university students and the society and to make them connect more with their own culture and social responsibility have become important issues in higher education. Service learning gained its attention in the U.S. higher education in the 1960s. Though, in Taiwan, implementing social services into curriculum has been a strong focus for second and tertiary education since 2001, research on whether providing service learning can help enhance students’ cultivation of citizenship is absent from literature. Hence, the goal of this study is to find out whether university students’ social responsibility can be enhanced through service learning. A project supplemented to the curriculum of a course, Special Topics on Cultural and Creative Industries, in a Department of Applied English was conducted during the semester. A group of students from the class volunteered to help with a military kindred village, Xiang-Kuan Second Village, situated just outside the university campus. Statistically, there were 879 military villages and not many of them are preserved well or even exist now. Military village built massively after the Kuomintang’s retreat to Taiwan after 1949 to accommodate the soldiers was a unique feature of Taiwan history. By applying students’ major, they designed an English leaflet which helps foreign tourists find the village and understand its historical background. Although students felt frustration during the process, they had great sense of achievement after the final leaflet was created and distributed. Additionally, an interactive wooden board was created to help visitors understand the history of the village more vividly. Through the social learning, students not only gained the abilities to conduct a project, but also understood their local culture and history. Furthermore, students’ social responsibility was enhanced through providing the social services to the society. Keywords: social responsibility, service learning, military kindred village


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