The digital divide is a modern barrier for immigrant, low-income, and rural communities in Rice County. Part of overcoming this divide comes through access to technology, but creating accessible and culturally appropriate technology is just as important. New academic civic engagement opportunities in Carleton’s Computer Science department may help students engage and build technology that responds to human needs and helps people navigate institutional systems.
Professor Jeff Ondich and his Mobile App Development class have been soliciting needs from the Carleton community and beyond by designing different mobile app prototypes for real world applications. Professor Ondich said he added an ACE component to this advanced software design class because he “wanted to give students the experience of working with a client, a real person who wants a real thing built … this is one of the ways our students can be particularly valuable in the software industry because they have writing skills and speaking skills, they can bring a more person centered view to software development.”
In the spring of 2014, the first time that Ondich offered this ACE course, only about half of the class worked with actual clients. Some students worked with facilities and the sustainability office to create an app that provides easy access to Carleton energy statistics, while others made use of nearly seven decades of Carleton weather data. However, the project that received the most attention was an Android/iOS app for New Student Week 2014. Ondich’s students worked with Louis Newman, associate dean, and Lee Clark, director of student activities, to design a mobile app for new students to help them navigate campus and keep track of orientation events.
As Ondich notes, “six weeks for most developers, and certainly brand new developers, is not enough time to get something ready for deployment.” Newman and Clark wanted to see the project through to help students ease the transition to higher education. So they hired junior computer science major, Stephen Grinich, to finish the app over 10 weeks this past summer, and the app was deployed and used by new students in the class of 2018.
While Ondich was excited about the success of this project, he was more inspired by the input he received from his students at the end of the term. As part of the “maiden voyage” of this App Development class, he asked students what could be done to improve the course in the future. They unanimously demanded that everyone work with an external client. “The people who were doing their own projects looked at the experience of the people who were working with real clients and said ‘oh that was more valuable than what I was doing.’”
The class is running again in spring 2015, and this time every student will work with a community partner. This year’s apps range from tools to schedule appointments with the writing center, to an app for Carleton’s independent radio station, and variations on the NSW app for other events like reunion and the summer academic programs. But Ondich hopes to expand this project to clients outside Carleton, and he has already solicited ideas from the Northfield High School and City Council for future projects.
Though most of the products from the class will be prototypes, through these projects, students have the unique opportunity to build upon existing code and interface with real clients’ needs. This provides students with key experiences that prep them for the real world of software development. It also helps to make students aware of different kinds of audiences who access technology. As Ondich put it, “some software is really great, it serves people very well, and other software kind of sucks and it is clearly written by people who aren’t thinking about users … in fact just that word ‘users’ is dehumanizing in a way. I want my students to be working with real people and thinking about what they need and what would be good for those real people.”
Change is spreading out from Ondich’s class to the department as a whole and beyond the college. In the spring of ’15, another computer science professor has incorporated a community-based project. Professor Amy Czismar Dalal is partnering with the Rice County Mental Health Collaborative to work on an app and web interface to support patients experiencing mental health crises as they are being discharged from local emergency rooms. Furthermore, the college is exploring ways to expand the new student app to other sites of higher education to support an easier transition to college. Carleton has reached out to local community colleges to see if similar apps could be designed with and for them, which would support educational access for a broad range of students.
This year, over 500 Carleton students benefited from the New Student Week app. As this and other computer science projects are developed, we anticipate more Carleton contributions to overcoming the digital divide.