Web Design Curriculum and Syllabus Based on Web Design Practice and Students' Prior Knowledge

The Advanced Technical School from Novi Sad set up a completely new study group for web design in 2004. The main goals of the paper are to explain the steps that were taken in starting this group, and to present the educational program based on our own research through the organization of the group and course descriptions. Since there is a growing need for all kinds of IT specialists, particularly in web design due to the development of the Internet, we concluded it was necessary to found such a study group. At the time when it was established, there were not many similar groups in the world exclusively dealing with web design, which means there were few suitable programs that could serve as examples. Consequently, research on student prior knowledge was carried out to select and create appropriate courses. It was essential to check in advance what could be expected from our freshmen in order to avoid possible mistakes in designing the program. We tested 55 students of graphic design to see the status of their prior knowledge in web design. The reason why we chose this study group for testing was their interest in the WWW and designing for the Web. The test contained 28 questions regarding different web issues. They covered areas like usability, user- oriented web design, accessibility, privacy and security, which are briefly discussed in the paper. Although most of the students regularly used the Internet, they knew very little about these items. The obtained results enabled us to write the curriculum and syllabus for the group that included courses covering all these things. Two documents were made so as to provide learners with a combination of technical and artistic aspects of the web designing process in all its phases. Websites that have aesthetic values are more attractive and definitely contribute to the development of taste. Therefore, a good balance between courses offering technical knowledge and skills and those educating web artists is highly important. When creating educational programs in fields dealing with new technologies, especially if there is a lack of existing models, it is significant to examine students' prior experience and knowledge. The results of such investigations must be taken into account in order to determine standards that should be achieved, and to produce high quality programs. We believe that our curriculum and syllabus presented in this paper can be used as useful illustrative examples by those intending to start a similar study group.