Abstract:

A course in web design essentially teaches students to create web pages and web sites. Then, it is important that students get a lot of practice in class doing the same. What may be missing here is letting students apply what they have learned in a real-life situation where they can work with business owners or managers and help them with their web design needs. Specifically, each student can work with a businesses to create a web site that demonstrates what the business has to offer to the community or even to the whole world. This kind of collaboration between a student and a business can be done in a special capstone project that is part of the course. The project is assigned is to be done during the last quarter of the semester. However, grading such a project might present a challenge to the instructor. To facilitate grading and to promote some good organization skills for the students, the instructor may ask the student to keep a journal of what exactly happened during the interaction he/she had with the business while working on the project. The journal will show dates and activities that took place during the entire process of working on the project. This not only serves as a permanent record that documents the process but also serves as a document that helps justify the grade that the instructor ultimately assigns the student.

Ideally, participants in this presentation should have some interest in teaching a web design class. However, anyone who wants to know how to help students work collaboratively with the community is encouraged to attend.

Keywords:

Web, page, site, design, planning, implementation, online, face-to-face, student, business, community, collaboration, service, learning, project, journal.