2008 Woodie Awards
Internet Professional students showcase skills to school, employers at open house
Chan Park
Issue date: 5/7/07 Section: Science & Technology
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On Apr. 26, the INP 295 Professional Practices class held an open house for its students at the Gunder Myran Building in room 005. The students showed their guests, which included potential employers, their online portfolio websites. These websites were created to demonstrate their programming and design skills such as XHTML, CSS, and Flash.
The INP program began in 2000. Headed by Kelley Gottenchang, the Internet Professional department chair, the program provides balances the hard code as well as the design aspect to creating websites. There are seven full-time and part-time faculty members in the program. Students can be certified or earn an associates degree through the INP program.
INP 295 is a two-hour credit portfolio class for advanced students who want to seek employment in the Web design industry. Taught by Catherine Hayes, the class gives students the skills they need to apply their website skills towards launching their careers in the web programming industry.
"It's just a really growing program," said Hayes. "There are a lot of great students that are coming out of it and going out and getting jobs immediately after the program in the industry at web development companies."
INP 295 student Karen Dickenson started taking website classes in Fall 2005. Dickenson originally started in the advertising industry, doing print production for 15 years.
"I got involved in the INP program to make that transition from print to web," said Dickenson.
Karen Dec, another student, founded Brightgirl Designs, her own website design company. Clad in an elegant pink and white design motif with a light bulb, her website www.brightgirldesigns.com showcases her portfolio, which includes the local company Harmony Yoga.
And what is Dec going to do with her advanced certificate in website graphics design?
"I'd like to freelance and do contract work for different web design firms around town, " said Dec.
Guiding principles for website design
All the classes (coding, graphics, user experience, project management) in the INP program stress the following principles that are critical to effective Web experiences:
1. Put the user in control of their experience
2. Directly show users how their actions affect the website
3. Be consistent
4. Tolerate user errors; allow users to recover from the error
5. Provide feedback concerning what is happening with the website
6. Visual language (e.g., color, typography, identity, imagery, layout) and aesthetics are used to support the user experience
7. Simplicity promotes learning, remembering, and usage
8. Use familiarity to support the user experience, such as predictable paths through the website
9. Content must be well-written, succinct, and focused
10. Labeling must be descriptive and speak the language of the user
Source: Internet Professional Program, WCC, www.inp.wccnet.edu
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