Above: SACCEC (Sexual Assault Crisis Center of Eastern Connecticut) website concept designed/developed by Jacquelyn Gendreau. This re-design project focused on the study of the responsive web design concept and approach which were directly tied to the key components of contemporary front-end website construction.
Above: DA&D website designed/developed by the student team–Jaime Piscitello, Sarah Dugay and Sarah Gambardella.
The emphasis of this course is to build up students’ constructional web design thinking through professional practices. For example, as a major project, my students developed the Digital Art & Design program website (daandd.net) which serves as a recruiting tool and showcases our most recent student artwork and progress at Eastern. The project was dedicated to build connections between concepts being taught and professional real-world implementation. The students were challenged during the entire working which helped them to grow in many aspects, from research and project management to deploying appropriate techniques and improving trouble shooting skills. Through learning the ways to apply front-end web design knowledge to a real-world project, students were motivated to experiment and explore ideas and create a fresh and professional image for our program. The student teams developed several website options and the final was chosen by DA&D faculty members.
Web Design II is an advanced course in Web design. It serves DAMD students who have a focus on contemporary visual aesthetics, integrity of design, client satisfaction and technical mastery. Based on the knowledge and skills students acquired in Wed Design I, I continue to integrate hand coding into this class with an emphasis of the Responsive Web Design, a practice that makes web page layout to get changed according to the user’s screen size. Students work either in a team or individually to develop a comprehensive final project that reflects what they learn in this course.