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Service-Learning at King Abdul Aziz University: التعلم من خلال خدمة المجتمع في جامعة الملك عبدالعزيز: تجربة ناجحة في مادة بناء مواقع الشبكة العنكبوت |
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Workshop Means to Implement the Document of Views of Prince Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz on Higher Education, KAAU, Jeddah (Dhu Al-Hijjah 1425H/ February 2005 A.D.)
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Service-Learning at King Abdul Aziz University:
A Successful Implementation in a Web Authoring Course for Women
Dr. Arwa Yousef Al-Aama
Computer Science Department, King Abdul Aziz University,
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
aalaama@kaau.edu.sa
ABSTRACT. In service-learning, students integrate what they learn in the
classroom through community service. This paper describes service-learning
in a higher-level web authoring computer science course taught to women at
the King Abdul Aziz University (KAAU), Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The paper
describes how service-learning is carried out as part of the course completion
requirements. Students in this course are required to build a Web Site that
serves an entity in the society. The paper also describes a successful
partnership between the Computer Science (CS) Department and The Savola
Group, a major conglomerate in Saudi Arabia that decided to support the
service-learning initiative as part of its Corporate Social Responsibility
(CSR) program. Although the partnership is still recent, the initial indicators
and results of the first implementation during the previous semester seems
encouraging and reflects the success of the concept and its valuable benefit to
the students and to the community at large.
Keywords. Human-Computer Interface, Service-Learning, Web Design,
Community Service, Curriculum.
1. Service Learning
Service-learning in the Disciplines, as defined by the US National and Community
Service Trust Act of 1993, is:
“A method under which students learn and develop through thoughtfully
organized service that: is conducted in and meets the needs of a community and is
coordinated with an institution of higher education, and with the community; helps
foster civic responsibility; is integrated into and enhances the academic curriculum of
the students enrolled; and includes structured time for students to reflect on the service
experience."
The term service-learning was coined in 1967 to describe the educational practices
Dr. Arwa Yousef Al-Aama
212
and theory of integrating classroom concepts with a related community service
experience. Honnet and Poulsen summarize the benefits of service-learning by “Service,
combined with learning, adds value to each and transforms both” [1, 2].
Many faculty members across disciplines in various countries apply servicelearning
to connect the academic learning in the classroom to projects in the
community.
In service-learning, experiential learning in the form of fieldwork combined with
academic study takes place under the supervision of an appropriate faculty member. In a
typical service-learning formal setup, a student must contract with a client, a faculty
member, and a service-learning program coordinator, if available, to arrange for how
the service-learning will take place. Although in most cases service-learning implies
learning through providing a traditional service to the community, according to the
National Service Learning Clearinghouse, the definition of service-learning is still
evolving [3].
2. Benefits of Service Learning
Students in applied fields benefit enormously from experiential learning in which
projects with external clients are completed. Learning to create products and services
without a connection to those who will use the products and services provides a limited
view of the production process. In dealing with real life issues such as accuracy,
completeness and clarity of requirements, soundness of design, product usability,
thoroughness of testing, and understandability and comprehensiveness of consumer
acceptance - the students gain enormous insight. Service-learning is a type of active
learning in which students are required to conduct an activity, as apposed to passive
learning in which learners are required to read or look at pictures. In active learning
produces a 70-90% retention rate of learnt material while passive learning only
produces a 10-30% retention rate [4]. While projects are time consuming, students
acquire more accurate and complete pictures of development lifecycles than they could
without the projects.
A report by Eyler et al. [5] summarized the findings of service-learning research in
higher education over the years [1993-2000]. The report documents both personal and
social effects on students. Personal outcomes reported include positive effects on
student personal development in areas such as personal efficacy, personal identity,
spiritual growth, and moral development. Also reported are positive effects on
interpersonal development skills, the ability to work well with others, leadership and
communication skills. The summary also states that service-learning contributes to
career development. Social outcomes reported include reducing stereotypes and
facilitating cultural and racial understanding. Service-learning was also found to
enhance social responsibility, citizenship skills and commitment to service.
Furthermore, researchers found service-learning to have a positive impact on
students academic learning. Not only does service-learning improve students ability to
apply what they have learned in “the real world”, it also has an impact on academic
outcomes such as demonstrated complexity of understanding, problem analysis, critical
Service-Learning at King Abdul Aziz University: … 213
thinking, and cognitive development.
Students engaged in service-learning report stronger faculty relationships than
those who are not involved in service-learning. They also have higher chances of
graduation. When becoming involved in service-learning, student satisfaction with
college is improved. [5]
By involving students in real projects, the students are empowered with a sense
that they can make a difference. Furthermore, by involving them in community service
students are empowered with a sense that they can improve the society and get a sense
of civic duty that will last a lifetime.
The Eyler report also states that research found communities to report satisfaction
with student participation in service-learning activities, as it was found beneficial to
communities through the useful services students provide. Moreover, communities
report enhanced university relations through service-learning programs.
For faculty members, overseeing real world collaborations provides them with a
valuable tool that enables students to connect what they are learning in the classroom to
actual experiences working in the community. In addition, faculty members overseeing
such projects are able to stay current in their fields and to forge closer ties with the
industry, which in turn helps improve the understanding of the job market, thereby
increasing the relevancy of the topic taught to the real world demands.
For the educational institutes, such collaboration will produce more and better
internships for students and jobs for graduates, a need that continues to increase in
importance. In several model institutes of good practices in service-learning,
collaborating faculty members receive stipends from the hiring agencies to encourage
their active participation in the program. Furthermore, tangible benefits to the institutes
are increased visibility and positive publicity that leads to more funding [6] and better
jobs for graduates.
For clients, receiving services from students provides fresh current insights on
new methods and practices. Furthermore, clients will benefit from having a say on what
talents and skills are needed in new graduates as they will influence curriculum to better
meet their current demands. Moreover, clients will receive high quality services as
service-learning will be graded by faculty and supervised by high quality expertise for
low costs.
3. Computer Science and Service Learning
Colleges and universities report institutional commitment to service-learning
curriculum. Furthermore, colleges and universities report availability of service-learning
programs. However, it is unfortunate that only a few colleges and universities require
service-learning in their academic core [1].
Service-learning is not very visible in the Computer Science education
community, although faculty and students could gain great benefits from the integration
of service-learning practice and theory into curricula [1]. Sanderson calls for Computer
Science faculty involved in service-learning to develop, apply and disseminate effective
frameworks for integrating service-learning into the undergraduate CS curricula.
Dr. Arwa Yousef Al-Aama
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3.1 HCI and Service-Learning
As technology evolves, so does the area of Human Computer Interaction (HCI). In
a CHI 2002 Panel: Pinning a Tail on a Moving Donkey, Lazar et al. assert that the area
of HCI education must continuously evolve to meet the ever-changing needs of users.
The Panel claims that the limits of user-centered design are currently being challenged
by collaborative and distributed systems, such as web sites and hand held devices, and
that more user participation in design is needed. The Panel also argues that traditional
HCI testing methods require make-overs to ensure they are relevant to user needs. Thus,
the concept of ‘user-centeredness’ for students must be put into practice with
combinations of work-place visits, internships and experiences of different kinds of
usability testing [6]. Based on the above, service-learning in web design can produce
great benefits to students.
4. The KAAU CS Department Service-Learning Initiative
4.1 The CS 483: Web Authoring Course
The CS 483 course is a three credit hour upper division course taught at the
women’s CS department at King Abdul Aziz University (KAAU) in Jeddah, Saudi
Arabia. Students enrolled in the course learn and practice the complete cycle of web
development, from gathering user requirement to deployment of sites on the www to
user testing. Students study different programming languages, HCI basics and usability
standards as part of the course. Students in groups of 2-6 members choose a client in the
community that is in need of a web site during the first two weeks of the course. The
groups apply all what they learn in class to build user-friendly and useful web sites that
meet their clients’ needs. The number of students in each group is contingent upon the
instructor’s approval which is based on matching the scope of the project to the number
of members. At the end of the semester, each group is expected to have a complete
professional web site, that serves the needs of the client, up and running.
4.2 Examples of web sites built in the spring of 2004
The projects developed during the spring 2004 semester serve a wide range of
customers, both for profit and not for profit organizations. The clients included the
Mental Health Hospital of Jeddah, A.R. Khalil’s Museum of Art, The Science &
Technology Center, three philanthropic associations: ( Nabe’ Al-Wed Charity, Sanabil
Al-Khair Charity, and Jameyat Tahfeeth Al-Quran), four different departments at King
Abdul Aziz University, The KAAU Immunology Lab at the Medical Center, two CS
course instructors, The KAAU Accreditation Unit, an on-line Tutorial for Arabic Sign
Language for a center for disability, an elementary school, three small businesses, and
five subdivisions of The Savola Group: a major food conglomerate in Saudi Arabia.
5. The CS Department/Savola Partnership
According to The Savola Group’s mission statement, The Group “is now one of
the Kingdoms leading industrial companies. The Group actively works toward
Service-Learning at King Abdul Aziz University: … 215
enhancing and widening its Corporate Citizenship role based on its «Balanced Way»
corporate culture. Part of the «Balanced Way» is Savola’s commitment to the “taqwa”
or Conscientiousness value which includes the Group’s responsibility to the community
at large. Savola takes an active role in social, environmental, and community concerns.
The Group engages in activities that serve the community such as Saudization,
education funding and empowering women.“ [7]
With that in mind, the instructor of the Web Development course approached The
Savola Group in request of sponsoring the Service-Learning initiative. The Group
welcomed the idea and accepted the proposal set by the KAAU CS Department.
As part of its Corporate Social Responsibility and its commitment to the
community, The Savola Group decided to support the KAAU CS Department Service-
Learning Program and to embrace it. The Group signed a one-year contract with the CS
Department to sponsor students to build web sites that are needed by the Group or by
the community.
5.1 The Partnership Framework
The KAAU CS Department and The Savola Group setup a framework through
which the Group would support the service-learning initiative.
Both parties agreed that any enrolled student in the CS 483 course can voluntarily
choose Savola as their web site client for their course project and that the web site
requirements set by Savola, should directly relate to the material being taught while at
the same time benefiting the Savola Group or any community entity Savola
recommends. In successful service-learning the service experience should be related to
classroom concepts and should focus on learning and not on service [4, 8] .
The Savola Group as part of its contract with the CS Department provides the
course instructor a generous agreed-upon monetary grant every semester to be used to
improve the CS 483 course for subsequent semesters. The Group also contracts the
course instructor as a part time consultant to oversee the projects and provides a grant to
hire an administrative assistant to help the instructor. Research reports lack of resources
and lack of faculty reward as barriers to service-learning [5]. This is non-existent in this
framework. On the contrary, with the agreed-upon support, The Savola Group
encourages faculty members to actively participate in service-learning.
The Group also assigns a female coordinator who works for the Group as a point
of contact for the students whose culture would prohibit them from working with male
clients and to help answer all students’ questions.
The students will work in groups of two-six members each, depending on the
scope of the site. The groups will compete together while building the sites. The
members will be required to go through a complete development life cycle from the
stages of gathering user requirements to the stage of implementation and user testing.
The instructor of the course will oversee the complete life cycle and supervise the
quality of the product. At the end of the semester, all participating students will receive
an award of recognition in the form of a diploma. However, 2 groups will be selected to
receive 1st and 2nd place awards in the form of plaques, and monetary awards for all
Dr. Arwa Yousef Al-Aama
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their members. All other groups, no matter how many, who submit sites that will
actually be used by Savola or a community entity will qualify for 3rd place awards.
Each 3rd place member will also receive a plaque and a smaller monetary award.
Evaluation criteria: Evaluation of the different projects will be based on the
judgment of the course instructor and whether or not the web site served its intended
goal as reported by the evaluation of Savola members.
5.2 A First Implementation of the Framework
During the first implementation of the partnership between Savola and the CS
Department, 24 students out of the 103 students enrolled in the class volunteered to
participate. Savola provided five different projects to the students. The projects were to
build sites for the following different Savola owned entities: Savola Careers, Herfy: A
fast food chain owned by Savola, Savola Packaging Systems (SPS), United Sugar
Company (USC), Saudi Arabian Glass Company (SAGCO).
Fig. 1. The Savola Career Web Site.
Service-Learning at King Abdul Aziz University: … 217
Fig. 2. The SPS Web Site showing SAVO the robot.
Fig. 3. The Herfy Web Site.
Dr. Arwa Yousef Al-Aama
218
The participants produced very high quality web sites that qualified all of them for
1st, 2nd and 3rd places. The Savola Career group and the SPS group were both chosen
as 1st place winners. The Savola Career group provided excellent competitor analysis,
quality content, and online form processing. These were the group’s main competitive
advantages. The SPS group integrated what they studied in their AI course into the CS
483 course and so added an intelligent agent that provided online help to users. The
Agent was a robot, the group named him SAVO short for Savola, which would accept
questions from visitors and provide online answers. The group also provided online
tools that would enable any non-technical person to update news and archive old
articles, as Savola had a need to have a non-technical person update its news. The Herfy
and USC groups qualified for second place. The Herfy group built two versions of the
site (in Arabic and in English). The sites were very complete and the designs were very
user friendly and usable. The USC group, although composed of 2 members only,
provided animated images of the sugar refining processes, detailed maps, guest books,
feedback forms, and many other features. The SAGCO group was granted 3rd place for
producing a complete web site, but with a few minor problems in compliance with
usability standards.
The Savola Group complied with all its agreed requirements and added a generous
surprise ceremony in which the students were honored and given their awards.
5.3 Student Evaluation
After completing the projects, and before notifying the students of their
placements, they were asked to evaluate their experience through a short survey in
which their opinions were solicited about what they gained out of the experience, the
obstacles they faced, how to improve the program, the awards, the coordinator
contribution, and whether they will recommend participation in the program to others in
the future.
Students reported several benefits gained from their participation in the program
such as improving communication skills, applying what was learnt in class in real
projects, competitor analysis, problem solving, learning from others, understanding
one’s rights and responsibilities, and time management. Interestingly, all students
(100%) reported working in a group and dealing with a real client as the major benefits
of the program. On the other hand, all students (100%) also reported data gathering as
the major obstacle. This was due to many reasons. In some instances, it was difficult for
some of the female students to visit male only work places to gather the needed
information and the students had to depend on the coordinator to supply them with most
of the information. The female coordinator faced the same problem. In others, the
clients did not take the students seriously enough when they knew it was a class-related
project thinking the end product will be of low quality and would never be used. And in
some cases, the client did not really know what they needed on their web site. Similar
obstacles for the same reasons have been reported in other service-learning in web
development settings [9].
All students, with the exception of one, were also satisfied with the services and
Service-Learning at King Abdul Aziz University: … 219
help provided by The Savola Group coordinator. All students reported that the award
was suitable. Suggestions for other awards were to provide fieldtrips to the Savola’s
industrial sites, letters of recommendations, job placements, and participation in the
personal development training that The Savola Academy provides.
In evaluating the overall value of the program, students were given a likert scale
of 5 choices ranging from the program being very unuseful to being very useful and
were asked to rate it. All students reported the program as either very useful (75%) or
useful (25%). When asked whether they will recommend the program to others, all
students (100%) answered “yes”, showing a positive reaction to the program.
5.4 Coordinator Evaluation
The Savola Coordinator was also given a chance to provide feedback on the
program. The Coordinator provided similar feedback about the skills and benefits of the
program as reported by the students. The Coordinator explained that the major obstacle
she faces was the fact that she was unable to always provide the needed data to the
students, thus some students always complained to her about the lack of needed data.
The Coordinator recommends that the students be responsible in the future to seek their
needed data directly from the clients without the need to go through her, as it was
difficult for her to coordinate with five different clients. In order to further improve the
effectiveness of the program, the Coordinator suggests the program be publicized in the
community to gain support and to enable people to reap the benefits. The Coordinator
also suggests applying the program in other CS courses such as Database Management
and Software Engineering and in other disciplines such as Management, Marketing,
Home Economics and Statistics.
5.5 Results of the First Implementation of the KAAU Service-Learning Effort
After completion of the course, and as a result of the successful application of the
service-learning during the past semester, four female students were immediately
contracted by The Savola Group to work on different web-based systems. The Savola
Group also decided to take the service-learning initiative to a further level by
negotiating similar contracts with the KAAU Dept. of Transportation in the College of
Engineering to support students to research solutions for traffic bottlenecks in the city of
Jeddah and with the KAAU Marketing Department to conduct market research.
Furthermore, the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry (JCCI) is currently
considering to contract with KAAU using the same framework to support the servicelearning
initiative. The JCCI is also considering similar relations with the Department of
Graphic Design at another local women’s college, as it is not offered at KAAU. The
JCCI will contract the Graphic Design major students to work on publications for the
JCCI.
The Savola Group, encouraged by the high quality student work and results of the
first implementation, supported 2 more projects that support the community, one was to
build a system web site for the First Science Teacher Symposium sponsored by the
Ministry of Education and another was a web-based system for Al-Sayiddah Khadijah
Dr. Arwa Yousef Al-Aama
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Center at the JCCI which provides support and services for Saudi business women.
6. Online Resources on Service Learning
• Campus Compact http://www.compact.org/faculty
“Campus Compact is a national coalition of more than 900 college and university
presidents committed to the civic purposes of higher education. To support this civic
mission, Campus Compact promotes community service that develops students
citizenship skills and values, encourages partnerships between campuses and
communities, and assists faculty who seek to integrate public and community
engagement into their teaching and research.”
• American Association for Higher Education Disciplinary Resources on Service-
Learning http://aahe.org/service/
• American National Service-Learning Clearinghouse http://www.servicelearning.org/
higher_ed/index.html
• The American Summary Report: http://www.compact.org/resource/aag.pdf
At A Glance: What We Know about The Effects of Service-Learning on College
Students, Faculty, Institutions and Communities, 1993-2000: Third Edition.[5] "At A
Glance" summarizes the findings of service-learning research in higher education
over the past few years and includes an annotated bibliography. It is designed to
provide a quick overview of where we are in the field today and a map to the
literature.
7. Acknowledgments
Our thanks to our service-learning partner The Savola Group for all their support
to making this program a success.
References
[1] Sanderson, P., Where’s (the) Computer Science in Service-Learning? The Consortium for
Computing Sciences in Colleges. CCSC 2003.
[2] Honnet, E.P. and Poulsen, S., Principles of Good Practice for Combining Service and Learning.
Wingspread Special Report. Racine, Wisconsin, 1989.
[3] The National Service Learning Clearinghouse. http://www.servicelearning.org.
[4] Sanderson, P. and Vollmar, K., A Primer for Applying Service Learning to Computer Science.
SIGCSE 2000 3/00 Austin, TX, USA
[5] Eyler, J.S., Giles Jr., D.E., Stenson, C.M. and Gray, C.J., At A Glance: What We Know about The
Effects of Service-Learning on College Students, Faculty, Institutions and Communities, 1993-2000:
Third Edition. Vanderbilt University. August 31, 2001. Funded by the Corporation for National
Service, Learn and Serve America National Service Learning Clearinghouse
[6] Lazar, J., Gasen, J., Preece, J. and Winograd, T., New issues in teaching HCI: Pinning a tail on a
moving donkey. ACM Conferenceon Human Factors and Computing Systems: CHI 03 Extended
Abstracts, Minneapolis, MN, 696-697 2002.
[7] The Savola Group. http://www.savola.com.
[8] Zlotkowski, E., Linking Service Learning and the Academy. Change, January/February 1996.
[9] Chaytor, L., Urban Empowerment: A Successful Example of Service Learning. CITC4’03, October
16–18, 2003, Lafayette, Indiana, USA. |
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Publishing Year |
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2005 AH
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Added Date |
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Saturday, January 10, 2009 |
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