Small Business Website Development: Enhancing the Student Experience Through Community-Based Service Learning

Abstract

Small-scale retail and service businesses often do not have the knowledge, skills, time or money to develop an online web presence. These small businesses recognize that in order to be competitive they need to use technology and have an online presence in order to attract customers. At the same time, research suggests that students can benefit from projects that provide real world experience. Community-based, experiential service learning offers a way for students to work on realistic and valuable projects while benefitting small-scale retail and service business owners. Therefore, this research uses experiential service learning as a way to meet the web development needs of small businesses while providing students with a real world educational experience. This study presents the findings in terms of impact and lessons learned from a student partnership with small-scale businesses from a small community for experiential service learning website development.