Civic Engagement Meets Academia: Incorporating Service Learning and Social Media in an Information Systems Project Management capstone Course H. Kevin Fulk, J.D., Ph.D. Department of Computer Information Systems College of Business and Public Administration Southern University at New Orleans

Background In the Spring 2013 Semester, I taught a new course. The course, which I had newly developed, was a Project Management Capstone course for computer information systems (CIS) majors. Three student teams (Alpha, Beta, and Gamma) worked with small business owner clients who included: A chocolatier, A photography and digital media specialist, and The owner of a medical supply company.

Background, Continued My goals for this new course included: Students would learn key project management skills. Students would have opportunities to work with actual small business owners. The students would provide these small business owners with valuable products and services. In doing this, the students would play a role in enhancing local small businesses. Small businesses play a key role in the economy of the greater New Orleans area. The students would use social media to organize their project teams and the work they produced.

Lessons Learned 1. Requiring students to use a form of social media (Google sites), with which they may not be very familiar, gives a challenging (but attainable) opportunity for them to learn new skills. 2. Incorporating service learning principles, enabled by social media, provides valuable hands-on experience for students to learn the theoretical aspects of the course (e.g., project cost variances). 3. Social media can also be incorporated into the projects that the students undertake (e.g., enhancing a small business’ presence on a well-known social networking site, such as Facebook).

Lessons Learned, Continued 4. The small business owners benefit from the projects that the students undertake. 5. These small business owners should have a role in providing feedback about the students’ performance, to help provide a more balanced view of the students’ learning and performance.

Members of Team Gamma Meeting with Their Client

A Page from Team Beta’s Google Site