Web project/client project

Information for clients

Students in "Creating for the Web" complete four assignments. By far the most difficult, and also the most rewarding for the students is the "Client project", in which they assemble a small website for a client.

One or several students may work on the same project. If more than one, they are each creating an independent version of a site for you.

This service is free of charge, but is it right for you? Here are some considerations...

Here's the description the students have of what the client project consists of.

Who's organizing this?

Paul Meyer Reimer. I teach this course in web design. I also organize much of the web publishing activity on the Goshen College website. Contact me at paulmr@goshen.edu.

When does this happen?

Students in the Fall term will be choosing their projects in mid- to late-September. They should be contacting clients in October. Their work must be wrapped up by the end of the semester in mid-December. Students in the May term begin the process at the beginning of May, and end near the end of May.

What level of expertise in web design do the students have?

There are no pre-requisites for Comm326. No prior computer knowledge is assumed. However, in the course of the class students are expected to learn, and be able to apply in their client web sites:

• Graphics skills, including scanning photos, image manipulation, image compression appropriate to the internet, creation of text graphics,
• Writing and information organization, including writing web pages that can be easily scanned, coming up with appropriate site organization and navigation schemes,
• How to manage websites, including using Stylesheets, and other techniques that result in easy to maintain, visually consistent websites,
• A smattering of advanced topics: We touch on writing and processing forms on the web, and on using javascript, but not in depth, and do not deal with interfacing to databases.

How much faculty supervision and feedback do students receive?

I can't be closely involved in each and every project. However, students must submit a rough draft of their site, to check on overall scope and organization of the project, and several hours of in-class "lab" time are set aside for students to work on, and raise questions particularly about their client projects.

What would my responsibilities as a client be?

You would meet with the student(s) several times throughout the term to define the kind of information you'd like to make available, and provide content (perhaps in the form of word-processing files, to be converted to web format, images and/or artwork to be scanned and used).

What size of website are the students expected to create?

They need to create a website of roughly 4-8 web pages, in addition to a home page. It can be a sub-site, a part of a larger site that your organization has. However, it should be 4-8 related pages. One goal is for student to deal with navigational issues... how to split up information in a comprehensible fashion, and make it easy to find. By prior arrangement, students can create a bit less content, and instead spend time with you, the client, figuring out how to maintain the site.

Will the website be available to the public?

Generally, yes. Students usually develop their websites in their personal web publishing folders at Goshen College. The sites are generally available to the public while they are being developed, (and thus, you can generally see a rough draft of what students are doing, if they tell you how to browse to their site), but are not publicized. If you have a particular need to make the site somewhat more restricted, that's possible.

What happens to the website after the course?

If you already have a place to host your website, and the work that the student has done meets with your satisfaction, you may ask the student to help you move their work to your host. If you don't have a place to host your website, you might want to simply keep a copy on disk of the student's work.

Goshen College is willing to consider hosting websites for local non-profit organizations or church-related organizations. If you are seeking a website on behalf of some unit at Goshen College, arrangements can also be made to move the student's website into a long-term location on GC's webserver.