Service Learning, Software Engineering, and Hurricane Katrina - A Case Study

This application, developed by students in service learning courses, will be used both by workers at the Red Cross to find and solicit volunteers and by volunteers who want to keep track of their volunteerwork history and Red Cross certifications. By capturing such knowledge in an easily accessible database, Red Cross workers can use our intuitive front end to rapidly find the workers they need with speed and accuracy not possible with their paperbased system. In accordance with the mission statement of the American Red Cross Disaster Services, our application helps to “reduce human suffering by helping people prevent, prepare for, and recover from natural and other disasters.” [1] The original implementation uses PHP for the interface and application with a MySQL database; future versions will use JavaServer Faces for the interface and application. This paper describes the implemented system and the benefits of incorporating service learning into Computer Science courses.