Work in Progress: Helping College Students Understand Digital Divide

The term digital divide refers to the socio-economic difference between communities in their access to computers and the Internet. Closing the digital divide has been considered as national interest and of great social benefit. This paper presents an innovative approach in helping college students understand the problems and impacts of the digital divide through a service learning project. The course hosting the service learning project is computer mastery with active server pages. Our campus is surrounded with schools that have a high percentage of minority students and students from low income families. The service learning project sends college students in teams to local schools and non-profit organizations to teach computer lessons to those who otherwise cannot afford. This paper will describe how such community service can be linked to the learning objectives of the course. Impacts of the project on all parties involved will be discussed