Using A Class Project to Address the Web Design Needs of the Local Business Community

A collaborative project is described. In this project, students in a web design class contacted local businesses and created web sites (collections of web pages) to benefit these businesses. Two phases of the project, planning and implementation, are described. The project, suitable for both online and face-to-face instruction, required that students keep a journal. The instructor did a follow-up investigation to assure that the websites that students created were indeed what the businesses asked for. In this presentation, the importance of training our students properly in web page design will be emphasized. Participants will learn how to help their students understand that the overall process of developing a web site is not just creating the web pages and linking them together. Good planning includes sketching the navigation structure of the web site and determining the content and navigation of each web page. In addition, keeping a journal of student-business meetings and interactions is important. Ideally, participants should have some interest in teaching web design but anyone who wants to know how to help students work collaboratively with the community is welcome