Web Design and Development

Introduction/Course Synopsis

The evolution of the website has started before the millennium era. Now, it is widely used and has become a necessity in various job tasks including education field. Although the website has been introduced for more than 20 years, the general knowledge of creating and using the website is still not satisfying. In the internet age, if a website is not design and develop in a proper manner, it will really cost the owner of the website a huge lost in traffic and vice versa. Thus, the importance of this course which will help the students of the QMT323E course to better equipped them with the necessary knowledge on creating the website well.

This course is to provide the students to learn about the design and development of a web based tool. The course has been design to be divided into two parts which are Design and Development of the web based tool. The design part covers the theoretical background of learning and other e-learning theories. While, the development part focuses on the e-learning tools which used for teaching and learning purposes. The first eight lectures are on the design part whereas the last three lectures are on the development part.

The design part consists of the design principles of web site using Lee and Owens Model (2000) of Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation and Evaluation (ADDIE). Besides, this course also touches on Bloom’s Taxanomy which lead the lecturers to understand writing the objectives to fulfil the learners’ needs according to the different skills level. Next it will cover on the learning theories which have 4 paradigm shifts. This is to best understand the learners’ learning pattern too.

Moving on, the course will not be complete without Web Usability Principle. This principle is to show the quality attributes of the web page that makes the design of the website easy to view and use. After learning the attributes, the students are also exposed to the good and bad design of user interface. This is prerequisite as it is the application part of the Web Usability Principles. Students get to scourge in through the internet for examples to apply their knowledge of the principles on what constitutes good and bad attributes of the websites.

Further on, the course proceeds with the internet security and ethics. This topic educates the students on the protecting themselves against the threats and danger of the internet. Moreover, students get to expose themselves on how to behave in internet world and to differentiate what is right and wrong actions in internet. Plagiarism has also become the most discussed about topic in the community of internet which requires us to teach the students the correct way of using them. Thus, this topic explores about creative commons, copyright and copyleft which will hopefully help the students to have adequate knowledge to not commit plagiarism.

The second part is the development stage where students develop a project based on project-based learning method. The development stage is important as it is the after process of design phase. Students get to expose themselves on the techniques and ways to develop a good website.

The development phase starts with the basic of Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) which is the essence language of scripting. In here, students are exposed to dynamic web applications using basic HTML. HTML is important to learn as it is the widely used and most common scripting language available.

Web 2.0 technologies such as Padlet, Prezi, Poll Everywhere, Blendspace, Edmodo, Google Drive, Socrative, Vimeo, Audacity and YouTube are introduced into this course. These web 2.0 technologies are the most commonly used in the education world today which brings about many benefits for students and educators.

Each e-learning tool has different functionalities which make our teaching and learning process easier and faster. It covers learning management system, presentation slides, video, audio, evaluation and cloud storage tools. Padlet and Blendspace bring about a wall that provides an avenue for educators and students to post up their thoughts on a particular topic. This tool functions as a repository of e-learning contents saved up on a wall to benefit everyone who is learning a topic. Prezi is a presentation tool where multiple people can edit and save their contents online. It provides other functionalities like zooming, inserting video, audio, text and many more in a seamlessly easy way.

Edmodo is learning management systems with the interface like Facebook which provide a system for educators to store all their learning contents for the students to learn. Audacity, Vimeo and YouTube are three audio and video editing and also posting. In here, learners can learn thousand and one learning contents which practically in every topic in the world. Poll Everywhere and Socrative are two tools which provide evaluation avenue for lecturers to gauge the understanding of the students. Lastly, we have the widely used cloud storage which is Google Drive where everyone can store their documents and files online.

Overall, this course is made up of 60% project based and 40% examination.

Objectives

The overall goal of this course is the application of instructional design and development concepts and principles. These will include pedagogical, technological, organizational, and ethical issues related to the design, development and assessment of web-based instruction.

After completion of this course, the students will be able to:

• Demonstrate their ability to apply relevant instructional design principles.
• Analyze a complex instructional design situation and design, develop, and evaluate an effective Web-based intervention strategy.
• Apply usability engineering strategies to produce interactive and effective interface designs for Web-based instructional materials.
• Apply the 21st Century Education, Blooms Taxonomy, ADDIE model, Web 2.0 technology and the new Learning Theories in this era.
• Apply Usability Principles to design and develop a good website.
• Employ the basic HTML tags to develop a website.
• Discuss the Web ethics and security in web design and development.
• Develop a good website by applying all the theories and principles that was discussed.
• Communicate about Web development technologies using Weebly as an open source.
• Develop a dynamic portfolio or project -based learning using Weebly as an open source.