SERVICE LEARNING IN A DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS CAPSTONE COURSE

Abstract

Engineering students must understand the impact that their engineering skills can have on their community. Service Learning is a form of experiential education in which students engage in activities that address human and community needs together. It offers students a wonderful opportunity to learn and develop useful skills through application of their newly developed skills. In this paper we will present four experiences of these kind of projects which can be labeled as Service Learning because the main development axis is the community need. One of the works is oriented to the mapping of service offerings and a no-cost mapping application was developed. Two of the works address Urban Transportation issues, namely automatic fare collection and Automatic Vehicle Location (in progress). The last one address web accessibility meta-evaluation for people with special needs.

Index Terms - Service Learning, Capstone Courses, Urban Transport, Web Accessibility