The integration of community service as a teaching pedagogy into the academic curriculum of university education is embraced wholeheartedly in some parts of the world, and is gathering momentum in many other countries and regions. The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) made a strong commitment to embrace service-learning (SL) enthusiastically in 2010.  Starting with 5 credit-bearing subjects with 100+ students in the 2011-12 academic year, the program has grown to 60+ subjects with 4,000 students in the 2015-16 academic year. In 2016, we will graduate the first cohort of undergraduate students who are required to complete at least one service-learning subject before graduation.

We organized the 1st “International Conference on Service-Learning” on 19-21 November, 2014 at PolyU. It was designed as a platform for interested academics and practitioners to share their research and experience with each other, to promote collaboration, and to further develop the scholarship of service-learning. At the 2014 conference, 31 full papers and 5 student papers were presented, and 21 posters were exhibited. It was attended by 180 persons from 21 countries and regions. Because of the enthusiastic participation in the first conference, the International Advisory Committee decided that we should continue to organize the conference.

The 2nd International Conference on SL will be held on 1-2 December, 2016 at PolyU, Hong Kong. It aims to further promote the scholarly development of the theories, models and pedagogy of service-learning, and to provide an opportunity for academics and practitioners who are interested in a scholarly and evidence-based approach to service-learning to come together, interact and share with, and learn from each other regarding the latest research and best practices.

There will be 2 full days of academic/professional paper presentations on 1-2 December, 2016, with 2 keynote presentations by leading researchers in service-learning.