A group of Information Technology seniors has chosen to focus their senior project on helping low-income families by creating a Web site to host online nutrition classes.

The students have been collaborating with Provo's Women, Infants, and Children Program to create the online classes for their senior capstone project. Nutrition classes are required for participants to receive food vouchers, but because they can be difficult to attend, IT students are creating an online alternative.

The students working on the project are Ryan Amy, from Shreveport, La.; Thomas Coplen, from Colleyville, Texas; Corey Niepraschk, from Spanish Fork; Alma Ohene-Opare, from Accra, Ghana; and Matthew Smith from Highland.

"The lower income demographic is changing, and just because they have lower incomes does not mean that they don't have access to technology," said Rickelle Richards, an assistant nutrition professor who first suggested the project. "We need to think more about today and what is available so we can take advantage of it."

The online classes are designed to be interactive and will allow health workers to continue publishing new content as well as track users progress once the project has been completed.

The classes will all be health related, focusing on topics including pregnancy, development, nutrition and physical activity.

"It's taken some time, but once we've first launched adding new classes, it will go much more smoothly," Richards said. "We didn't want to launch something mediocre and have people be disappointed. We want them to be excited about doing it."

The students have already completed most of the architectural work for the page and will be focused on implementing the design this semester.

"They've created a site that is very sustainable," Richards said. "Anyone in the future who is not necessarily an IT person can continue to add classes as the program develops."

The IT students said they enjoy the chance to use the knowledge they gained in class to help others.

"I see it a lot like community service," Ohene-Opare said. "Before our projects were kind of trivial and never really had any real life consequences. This puts everything we've learned into practice and on the line."

In addition to being able to help others, the students are able to gain work experience.

"This is the biggest thing most of us have done," Amy said. "As we go into interviews we can show that we have real life experience helping and working with customers and that we can do the same for them."

The IT department seeks these kinds of collaborations and enjoys it when other faculty and programs approach them for help.

"IT is really about application," said Chia-Chi Teng, the IT professor supervising the project. "Technology in itself is valuable but not until it is applied to something."

Copyright Brigham Young University 23 Jan 2009