The beauty of mixing it up? Comparing Online and Hybrid Modes of Peer Mentoring for Disadvantaged Youths in Hong Kong (Abstract)

Service-Learning is an educational approach that integrates community service into learning objectives. It has emerged as a valuable tool for addressing new and pressing educational needs, and for overcoming the unique challenges of class suspension posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Partnering with Tung Wah Group of Hospitals (TWGHs), the researcher carried out two service-learning projects in his Interpersonal Communication course by inviting his students to serve as peer mentors and offer communication training workshops for disadvantaged secondary school students. The first project, with 31 student mentors and 29 mentees, was conducted in pure online mode in Fall 2021; while the second project, with 30 student mentors and 30 mentees, was conducted in hybrid format in Fall 2022. In this study, the pedagogical design and implementation of these two service-learning projects will first be introduced. Based on the qualitative data collected from two post-intervention focus group interviews (N=12), the strengths and weaknesses of both modes of peer mentoring will then be compared. Given the prevalent use of conferencing technologies in higher education, hybrid peer mentoring is projected to become the best mode of peer mentoring due to its ability to mitigate the scheduling and transportation woes of face-to-face meetings, as well as compensate for the loss of physical interaction from the pure online mode.