Partnership Between Savola and KAU’s Computer Science Department
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 out of their participation
in the program such as improving communication skills, applying
what has been learnt in class in real projects, competitor analysis,
problem solving, learning from others, understanding ones 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
.
All students, with the exception of one, were also satisfied with
the services and 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.
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.
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. In addition, two
female students were contracted by the JCCI to complete part II
of the web services project they were working on during the
semester.
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 JCCI is currently considering to contract with
KAAU using the same framework to support the service-learning
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.
Currently, The Savola Group has 2 projects that support the
community lined up for the CS 483 course for next semester, one
is to build a web site for the First Science Teacher Symposium
sponsored by the Ministry of Education and another is for the
Khadijah Center which provides support and services for business
women.
See Also:
