The Effects of eService-Learning on HRD Students During Covid-19

The service-learning (SL) pedagogy has thrived over recent years. With the forced expansion of the online student population due to the Covid-19 pandemic, institutions of higher learning must develop programs with similar outcomes across both face-to-face and distance-learning applications. Before the influx of Covid-19, online educators turned to electronic service-learning (eSL) to address this divide. Little has been reported on the utilization of eSL during the covid-19 pandemic, thus the purpose of the present study was to investigate the effect of eSL on graduate students (N=24) enrolled in an online Business Leadership and Ethics course occurring during the covid-19 crisis with a significant eSL component. The submitted work is part of a larger, cross-case comparison of SL on campus and highlights the perceived student outcomes: increased student engagement, increased application of course knowledge to real-world scenarios, improved self-awareness, and connectedness to the community as a result of assisting the nonprofit organization. It bears noting that these results were consistent across students who performed their service in person (n=17) and those who completed their service via a distance format (n=7). With the Covid-19 crisis entering its second year, the present research presents an important first look into both the efficacy and the delivery methodology on SL during the pandemic.