1
Introduction
One of the
stakeholders of the University is the community. African universities have
realized this perhaps more than their overseas counterparts and most South
African Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) have a number of
community outreach programmes in place. Although many Departments of
Information Systems have system development projects with corporate or NGO
sponsors, more often than not the major benefit lies in the student (or
department) finding mentors and/or staff to solicit user requirement
specifications the sponsoring organisation usually ends up a prototype or, at
best, somewhat buggy, unsupported crippleware for their time involvement. A
true community outreach project is where the balance of value clearly lies
with the community, not the university or students side.
Traditionally, the
Department of Information Systems (IS) at UCT has required third year and
honours students to select system development projects as well as empirical
research topics in the community at large similar to the curriculum
requirements at many other HEIs. However, most of the outcomes of these
benefited the students more than the sponsoring organizations. Last year a
purely altruistic programme was launched in which all registered full-time IS
Honours students are required to engage in a community project of their choice
in order to gain some practical real-world experience and let the community
benefit from their IS skills.
2
An Educational Rationale for Community Service
Projects
In addition to the
community benefits, it is strongly believed that these types of service projects
contribute greatly to the students learning experience i.e. experiential
learning. This is reinforced by research that demonstrates clearly that
knowledge and learning retention rates are many times higher when teaching
others and practicing rather than merely reading or listening to information.
An interesting
framework to demonstrate a community-service learning approach is Finks
taxonomy of Significant Learning meant as a social update of the more
widely known Blooms taxonomy. Fink distinguishes the following levels of learning:
- Foundation Knowledge
understanding and remembering facts and ideas;
- Application acquiring
skills, creative and critical thinking, managing projects;
- Integration
connecting ideas, people, and realms of life;
- Human Dimension
learning about oneself and others;
- Caring developing new
feelings, interests, and values; and
- Learning How to Learn
becoming a better student, inquiring about a subject, self-directed learners.
So, a
community-based programme can be seen as a powerful and proving teaching
strategy which can enrich student learning, enhance your teaching, and
revitalize the community.
3
The Community Outreach Programme for IS students
at UCT.
3.1
Description
The project implemented
at UCT goes under the acronym HOCIP: Honours Outreach and Community Involvement
Programme. All registered full-time IS Honours students are required to engage
in a community project of their choice in order to gain some practical
real-world experience and let the community benefit from their IS skills.
3.2
Some salient features
- Time budget:
The total time commitment expected from
the student 20 contact hours (excluding travelling and preparation time)
- Individual:
The engagement is an individual one, but
students may work together in small groups where appropriate if this results in
a more meaningful overall project engagement.
- Independent:
The involvement may in no way
whatsoever be linked to any other academic or commercial project undertaken
by the student e.g. it may not be the same organization as the sponsor
for the IS Honours system development or empirical research project, or be
related to any paid-for
- Community:
The project should help the larger
community i.e. it should take place in NGOs, government organizations, schools
and similar organisations. It may NOT be done in a commercial or for-gain
environment.
3.3
Deliverables
Three deliverables
have to be submitted to the HOCIP coordinator.
- At the start of the
project, each student must submit an initial Memorandum of Understanding
(a sample form is provided to students). It consists of:
a.
about -page on the
organization: name, mission, contact details including sponsor (contact person)
b.
about 1 page stating
the nature of the engagement as well as a very specific description of the
duties of the student (including dates/times).
- At the end of the
project, students are required to submit a 2 page Project Summary specifically
detailing the outcomes and/or contributions by the student. In 2005, this will also
require a self-reflective statement on what the student learned from the
project. In addition, a 1-page time sheet detailing dates & times spent
by the student is also required (students choose their own format)
- 1 short confidential
report or letter (on the letterhead of the sponsoring organization) sent by the
sponsor directly to the department as an independent verification of the
student contribution. One paragraph generally suffices. (Free format)
Note that all
deliverables have to be signed by the sponsor.
3.4
Practicalities
The student is
responsible for locating a suitable project.
The Memorandum of
Understanding should be handed in mid-March. The final Project Summary should
be handed in by the end of May. The confidential report from the sponsor must reach
the department by mid-June. The hand-in dates are early in the academic year so
that the HOCIP does not impact on the larger deliverables required from
students (their systems development project and their empirical research report).
However, hand-in dates can be postponed on request given an acceptable motivation
and if the student takes full responsibility that this extension will not
impact negatively on other honours deliverables.
It is not the
intention of the programme to generate marks but satisfactory completion and
hand-in of all deliverables is a course requirement. Non-compliance may result
in a DPR. In addition, a small course mark (< 5%) may be allocated for
HOCIP.
3.5
Typical Examples
The following are
some sample programmes a student can investigate.
- Installing and
maintaining an open-source software installation for an NGO/NPO/community
organization/educational institution.
- Designing a customized
database for an NGO.
- Developing and finding
a (free) host for a simple static website for an NGO/
- Doing a once-weekly
maintenance of the computer lab of a school.
- Getting together a
group of first year students from disadvantaged background on a weekly basis to
discuss their studies (and various other related problems they may be
experiencing) and serving as a mentor for them.
Furthermore, a
list of previous years projects and organizations seeking assistance for the
current year is posted on the notice board. Work performed in exchange for a
reward (whether financial or not) or intrinsically related to any other
activity which has been rewarded, is not acceptable. Also not acceptable are
favours to friends or family (e.g. teaching computer literacy to ones girlfriends
father or removing viruses from ones grandmothers PC).
4
The First Two Years of the Project
The following
graphs give a high-level indication of activities which are being undertaken.
As can be gleaned from the charts, training and/or tutoring is the most popular
type of project accounting for half of the projects in 2005. This typically
involves tutoring of learners in schools in basic computer literacy or
teaching-the-teachers projects, often including a component of
network/computer maintenance. The second-most popular activity in 2004 was the
design of a static i.e. informational website for various organisations. This
dropped significantly this year although the decline is offset entirely by the
concordant increase in design of web-based systems i.e. dynamic,
database-driven web sites. However, the latter are classified with the system
design category. Support of hardware consisted mainly computer labs (PC and
network) maintenance.
Figure 1: Types of activities
Equally
interesting is to look at the type of organisations. The most popular
beneficiaries of the 2005 projects were on-campus organisations mostly SHAWCO
and UCT sports clubs. This is a shift from 2004 where non-profit organisations
accounted for one-third, which dropped to 13% in 2005. These figures exclude
religious organisations such as churches which account for about a tenth of the
projects. Interestingly, schools and other educational institutions account for
roughly a quarter of the projects. Governmental organisations doubled their
share from 6% in 2004 (mainly City of Cape Town) to 13% in 2005.
Figure 2: Project Beneficiaries
5
Some Typical Projects
The following are
examples of projects undertaken by students, indicating typical or preferred
types of projects.
- Train high school
learners and teachers in basic computer skills and lab management under
auspices of SHAWCO.
- Creation of a contacts
database and integrate with a mailing system for the Center of the Book.
- Act as business analyst
and mentor disadvantaged learners in the City of Cape Towns Kulisa project.
- Design a website for a
church to allow members to access bible studies and electronically search the bible.
- Develop a daily task
management system for the Domestic Animal Rescue Group.
- Capture and interpret
data pertaining to structural fires for the Disaster Mitigation for Sustainable
Livelihoods Programme.
- Develop a browser-based
children tracking database for the James House Childrens Home.
- Build a website to
assist in reunion of patients and friends post-treatment (JHB Hospital).
- Static website and
student pep talks for Mananga College (Swaziland).
- Develop a society
website template to allow for easy updating of any UCT SRC-linked societys
website.
- Develop an employee and
sponsor database for the Self-Help for the Healing Business.
- Develop an SMS/internet
contacting system for the Bahai Community.
- Assist with the PC
literacy programme for the youth leadership rehabilitation programme of Polsmoor Prison.
- Tutor students on the
introductory IS course of the 4-year BAdmin degree at Tsiba Education.
- Set up a library
management system for the Islamic Youth Societys Library.
- Develop a booking
system for FamSA.
- Set up a website and
content management system for the Hope and Dream Trust.
- Create a database for a
UCT student residence.
- Develop a lost and
found animals portal for the Animal Rescue Organisation.
As can be seen,
not only do the projects exhibit a wide scope and range of beneficiaries, but
many tasks develop student skills. Hopefully, the benefits for the community
are not only real and measurable, but hopefully sustainable.
Students do not
only develop technical skills, but many benefit tremendously from their social
engagement and gain a deeper understanding, appreciation and empathy for the
societal needs. This is illustrated more clearly in a sample case study which
has been included as an addendum.
6
Future Work and Challenges
There are still several
issues to be resolved. Too many students still focus on easy targets mainly
developing web pages for on-campus student organisations. For the students that
do projects outside campus, we have not yet reflected properly on the possible
risks involved. These would include personal safety risks for the student,
UCTs organisational exposure for inadequate or bad projects and continuity
concerns with sponsors that become unavailable.
Perhaps the
biggest challenge is to incorporate and provide support for the critical
self-reflection that should be part of the learning process associated with
community outreach projects. We hope that we can formalize this component by
next year.
Given the ease of
implementation of such a programme, the early successes and the low overheads
of running it, we strongly encourage colleagues to implement a similar
programme as part of their post-graduate student IS curriculum.
7
References
Fink, L. Dee,
2003, Creating Significant Learning Experiences. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.
Theron, H. IS
Honours students make their mark Monday Paper, University of Cape Town, Volume 23 No 21 (2 Aug. 2004), p.8.
Van Belle, J.P.
& Smith, D.S. A Community Outreach Programme for Information Systems
Students at the University of Cape Town. Proceedings of the 35th Annual
Conference of the Southern Africa Computer Lecturers Association, Kasane (Botswana), 3-6 July 2005.
8
Addendum 1 - 2004 Case Study: JAMES HOUSE
COUNSELLOR SYSTEM
The following is a
typical example of a HOCIP project. It is quoted wholly from Theron [6] to
preserve the original comments and presented here in order to demonstrate the
learning and development process which students undergo during their outreach
engagement.
Nick Branco's
group chose James House in Hout Bay, a place of safety, shelter and care for
the children of Imizama Yethu. "They're doing a great job with the
community in this informal settlement, providing mainly child care and family
support," Branco said. The children's home had just bought a computing system
to replace their established paper-based mode of operation. Using the
technological skills, the group of Branco and team mates Andrew Klein, Richard
Heslop, Gareth Edwards and Mark Meyer built a web-based system, one that was
easily updateable and easy to maintain.
"The system
was very similar to our final systems development project for another
non-profit organisation, Warehouse, so it gave us a chance to test our
skills," Branco added. Though the system they built was small in terms of
"normal equivalents," it was still a comprehensive one, needing to
fill all their clients' specifications. For example, tracking each child's
progress in terms of emotional and behavioural development was initially done
via a paper-based system. James House wanted a computer system to assist child
tracking, providing reports on the children.
"We built a
computer system that made it possible for counsellors to create daily reports
on each child and to view summary reports on any child," Branco explained.
It also featured a built-in user access function. They are particularly pleased
that all the technology they used to create the system was open-source software
(free software) and the system itself was released as open-source software. The
system was written in PHP4 running on an Apache webserver, using MySQL as the
database. The whole system runs on a Linux server.
It took some
doing. Not only did their services save James House a wad of money (they had
approached a private company to set up a system), they managed to build one
along the same technological lines, to do the same job, without any restrictive
licence attached. "And it was free, a big plus to James House,"
Branco says proudly.
The project also
afforded some unique insights into community work, which Branco admits he had often
though of in terms of feeding soup to the homeless. "There's nothing wrong
with that, but it wasn't something I particularly wanted to do," he
explained. However, through HOCIP, we were able to see that one can help the
community by using skills and talents and improving one's skills at the same
time.
9
Addendum 2 - 2005 Case Study: Youth Computer
Literacy Program at pollsmoor prison
A group of 6
students undertook a program, Youth Computer Literacy Program (YCLP), headed by
the Association of Regional Magistrates of South Africa (ARMSA). This was done
in conjunction with a toast master association. The program entailed running
weekly computer literacy classes for juvenile prisoners at Pollsmoor Prison.
The program ran
every Saturday morning (09:00 11:30) from the 9th April till the 28th of May
(8 Weeks). A gala evening event was be held on the 25th of June where the
Students of the two programs will present on what they have learned and the top
performers will be awarded with prizes funded by ARMSA. All participants of the
YCLP were awarded certificates of participation.
The following
comments were given by the tutors:
When the course
first started, I was pretty cynical and apprehensive about the environment and
students we were going to tutor. I felt unsafe in way, even though their
wardens were around, and I also had my own discernments about them. I also was
not too sure if the students would be willing to participate. However I was
surprised at the way the students were so polite and involved in the sessions.
As time went by, I got to see past the label I had given them, prisoners,
because for some reason I understood that most, if not all of them, were in
prison because of the circumstances of their own lives.
It felt inspiring
and fulfilling to see how, the little that we were teaching these guys meant so
much to them. I was particularly moved by a few students who stated how they
regretted doing the crimes they had committed and how they hoped to take the
course further and turn their lives around. I understand that most of these
guys are not necessarily bad people. Even though they victimized other people,
I also believe that they are also victims of the environments they live in,
which is why they ended up getting into trouble.
The overall
program was an eye opener for me. It forced me to get out of my own little
comfort zone and it made me appreciate what I am and what I have achieved even
more. [] I believe that giving something to others, as a citizen of the
world, is the greatest reward of all. For me, this was the greatest
opportunity and if I had a chance to do it again I would.
Being to a prison
for the first time and the thought of being around criminals gave me that
uneasy feeling at first. Only until I started teaching these students I began
to see how well behaved and enthusiastic they were to learn. This changed the
perception I had to teaching them. I was now looking forward to the following
sessions and passing the skills I have onto them. I had developed a very close bond
with my assigned group and it was a real pleasure to teach them. They seemed to
grasp the concepts very quickly and always asked meaningful questions.
Polsmoor is a
world of brutality where the weak are torn apart and hard men rule. Its a
world in the shadows, a world with its own language, its own codes of violence
and honour, its own complex mythology. []
This was not the
kind of world that I entered into voluntarily. I was very sceptical about
teaching criminals how to use computers. After all, what do they care about
learning any sort of skill, was my pattern of thought. But after the first
session it became clear to me that these kids were very keen to learn, some
more than others. It was not all what I expected to find. It is hard to communicate
with them, because they are living in a completely different world than us, but
there is a common ground to be found between teacher and student.
During some of the
breaks, I would speak to the inmates to try and get an idea of their life on
the inside.
The following
comments are taken from (voluntary) feedback by the participants (students):
Before I started
with this program, I thought computers are just good for playing games, but
its actually used for storage of information and all kinds of stuff that make
life so much easier. I will really look forward to going out there and become a
D.J and make my family proud.
This programme
taught me how to do things on the computer that I was not aware of. When I go
out of jail I will be able to go on a further course and learn more of what I
already know, so that I can get a job.
I have to admit
the program were unbelievable cause I learn quite a lot. Im positive I have an
asurity cause of this marvellous program that Id build myself a base to take a
step forward in life. The people who aid me, I perceive them as true role
models & guiders in life. My tutor is really friendly, generous he teach as
a professor cause I understand what he teach me & he would always like help
me do new stuff with the comp. When being release Id like to go & work
just to provide my own table with bread. If I can learn more you bet I will.
The course was absolute incredible.
