Inter-disciplinary service learning - housing for the community

Service-learning (SL) can help students not only develop their personal qualities but also enhance their social and civic responsibilities. Despite the promotion since the mid-1990s, the development of SL is popular in faculties of humanities but not in other technical departments with intellectual orientations which are less associated with social services. It has been attributed to the lack of a conceptual model for disciplines like building and engineering guiding the delivery of SL. To fill the gap, the study has proposed a 3-Stage SL Approach which offers a pragmatic pedagogical model by encompassing the interdisciplinary academic education and field study, and a SL project in building discipline has been developed for validation of the model. The findings reveal that, besides the technical skills acquired in building inspection and assessment of adequate housing, generic skills of the students and their awareness of social responsibilities have also been enhanced through the inter-disciplinary SL.