Community Service (CST 361)
Course Description
A service learning course in which students apply computer literacy, multimedia design, and technology to assist schools, nonprofit organizations, and community agencies. The theme for the course is "Bridging the Digital Divide." Note: students must participate in required service placements with hours to be arranged. Students must be able to create and manage a web site.
Project Description
My service learning project is with the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, CA. The library is one of 13 presidential libraries administered by the National Archives and Records Administration's Office of Presidential Libraries based in College Park, Maryland.
The Docent Guild has approximately 200 volunteers that staff 23 different committees. Keeping track of events, volunteer efforts, contact information, scheduling, and other logistics is similar to running a business. Many of the volunteers are retired and are no longer close to the business world and changes in business technology, although many of them are active users of consumer electronics and technology such as smartphones, email, etc.
The Docent Guild had been using disparate Microsoft Excel to keep track of organizational and committee information, but over time these spreadsheets have drifted apart and now contain old, conflicting, or incomplete information, which made their management efforts very difficult.
The Docent Guild also produces a monthly newsletter that is mailed to each of the volunteers. The cost for printing and mailing the newsletter has become their number one expense. Their vision is to convert the printed newsletter to an online newsletter and provide access to it over the internet, thus saving the organization money
Final Project
As a non-profit organization, the Docent Guild qualified for free and discounted software from Microsoft. I assisted the Docent Guild in applying for this community benefit, setting up their online portal, and securing free licenses for all of their volunteers.
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To solve the immediate need of managing their volunteer workforce, we used SharePoint as the primary solution to build an Intranet site. Out of the box, SharePoint provided 50% of the identity and data tracking features that the Docent Guild was currently doing through spreadsheets.
