Students promote local businesses

By Monica Kreber 

kreberm@mytjnow.com

Students work on projects at the Hive, gathering downtown together from both Winthrop and York Tech. Photo by Monica Kreber • kreberm@mytjnow.comIt is called the Hive because it is a workplace buzzing with activity.

It is buzzing with activity because the Hive is a new program that gives Winthrop students the chance to work in the “real world.”

The Hive is for Winthrop’s digital information design 451 class, taught by Professor Jim McKim. Facilitator Jason Broadwater said the Hive consists of 30 students from both Winthrop and York Tech. 

“Winthrop has never had a 451 class because it is a brand new program,” Broadwater said, “so they wanted the class to be about serving real clients. Jim McKim was all over it.”

Broadwater said the class is doing two types of projects: one is designing and developing content-management system websites. The other part is doing Internet marketing activity – anything from social media to connective activity, publishing, posting, videography and anything one can do online for a website.

“From York Tech, we have credit-seeking people who are basically doing the equivalence of an internship,” Broadwater said.  “And we’ve got seven on-profit clients we are working with.”

Broadwater said the prominent clients include Children’s Protection Home, Rock Hill Schools Foundation, Historic Rock Hill and Rock Hill Economic Corporation.  

Broadwater called the class an alignment of different goals, including the idea of economic development in terms of jobs.

“A clustering of technology-based talent is one of the best economic  development tools we can have,” Broadwater said. “We are retaining Winthrop and York Tech students to create this hive of technology talent.”

Broadwater said the Hive, which is brand new to Winthrop, is a big deal for Rock hill because it is part of the College Town Action Plan.

“Rock Hill has been begging to bring students downtown for years,” he said. “No one was doing the Hive before this. We just really want Winthrop downtown.”

The project is bigger than just a class; the whole class is based on the project(s) with the clients. The first thing the students do is learn the business requirements of the project, and the rest of the semester is about executing the project. 

“ It’s really pushed on the students,” Broadwater said. “We’re going to show you what needs to be done, but you need to go out and do it.”

Senior digital information design major Nikki Ramey works on developing content-management for Children’s Protection Home in the class. She said the class is almost like being put into a real life job scenario.

“I think it will be a great thing,” she said. “Great things will happen here.”

Senior digital information design major Thomas Phifer said he thinks the environment of the Hive will result positively for the students.

“With the amount of people, institutions and organizations coming together for this project I don’t see how it couldn’t be a success,” he said.

While Ramey also mentioned that the program is still getting off the ground, second-year York Tech student Cameron McLeod said the only bad thing about the Hive is the fact that the main PCs lack Flash and Java, which are necessary for web work.

“That is being fixed so it might not count as a dislike,” McLeod said. “Hopefully I can get some good experience out of the Hive and possibly a job to work in as well.”

Broadwater designed and created the curriculum. He brought in all the projects, then he managed all the teams to execute the projects. Broadwater’s company Revenflo is responsible to deliver the outcomes at “market quality” to the clients.

“It’s not like a class doing a free project,” he said. “They’re paying us instead of hiring another professional service, so we better give them as good or better of an outcome as a professional business would give them.”

Despite the pressure, Broadwater said the students like the idea.

“It’s all about how students choose to engage,” he said, “and the students are so excited.”

Broadwater came up with the idea about a year and a half ago, first speaking with York Tech and then getting Winthrop involved within the past year. Broadwater said the class will allow students to function in a real-world environment and learn the skills of executing real world work with accountability.

“Already they’re meeting the business leaders of the communities and hopefully when they leave here one of these people will hire them,” he said.

The pilot project is two years long. However, the Hive needs clients for next semester or there will be no program, which Broadwater called “one of the real-world risks.” 

Broadwater said in the future he would like to be doing 10-plus projects a semester and get more institutions involved, more clients and more layers of the educational curriculum that they are not offering yet.

“Growth is what we’re looking for,” he said. 

Broadwater said the students had no idea what the class was going to be like.

“They knew they had to take the class, they had no idea what it was going to look like,” he said. “They just knew they were going to do a real project.”