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Sun, Nov 8, 11:30 - 11:55, Crystal 5 Paper (refereed)

Recommended Citation: Citurs, A. An Integrative Pre-Capstone Course Approach to Service Learning – Creating a Win, Win, Win Information Systems – Liberal Arts. In The Proceedings of the Information Systems Education Conference 2009, v 26 (Washington DC): §4354. ISSN: 1542-7382.

An Integrative Pre-Capstone Course Approach to Service Learning – Creating a Win, Win, Win Information Systems – Liberal Arts

Refereed

14 pages

Alex Citurs    [a1] [a2]
Department of Business Administration
Eastern Connecticut State University    [u1] [u2]
Willimantic, Connecticut, USA    [c1] [c2]

Tough economic times often raise questions as to the relevance and value of a liberal arts (LA) education. Responding to these concerns, many institutions across the United States are increasingly engaging in innovative educational endeavors to demonstrate the value and worth of a holistic integrative liberal education. A growing portion of LA institutions are requiring courses that provide students an opportunity to demonstrate the value of students’ LA experiences to other key aspects of their lives – relevance to their majors, connections to the local community through service learning, comprehension of diversity and global perspectives in collaborative endeavors, and holistic culminating/capstone reflective learning courses. Simultaneously, service learning (SL) for example is just one of the many dynamic trends impacting information systems (IS) higher education stressing the need for providing real world experiences. Given increasing pressures to include new and dynamic practices and technology coming from the business and information world and the additional course content requirements at LA institutions, many IS instructors and program coordinators are facing increasing pressure to be creative in addressing these demands. This paper outlines an approach to integrating information systems service learning project components with culminating LA experience objectives in a pre-capstone IS course.

Keywords: service learning, liberal arts experience, experiential learning, methodology, reflective experience

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