Can Web development courses avoid obsolescence?

Studies indicate that information systems and computer science programs should place more emphasis on software design topics.Because little significant software in a commercial environment is developed using only programming skills,students without exposure to design patterns and frameworks will be ill-prepared for the workforce. This paper investigates whether PHP-based web development courses should use PHP frameworks to guide program development and how to select an appropriate framework. The paper begins with a literature review of the concept of design patterns, particularly the Model-View-Controller(MVC) pattern. We review studies that argue that design patterns and frameworks are essential pedagogical tools. Finally, we report on our work to select an appropriate framework for incorporation into web development courses as well as the process by which some of the major PHP MVC frameworks were assessed to determine which is best-suited for use in an academic environment.

This paper investigates a class of database access errors that occur in the context of a web development course. While the use of an Object-Relational Mapping (ORM) simplifies database access, students still demonstrate reference errors such as mistakenly referring to the whole object rather than an attribute value that is a part of the object. Metonymy, a rhetorical device used in human communication, offers an interpretation to these errors. A study is presented where student answers are reported and analyzed in this context. Findings indicate the prevalence of reference errors and offer instructional strategies for addressing them.

Teaching students project managements requires a hands-on approach. Incorporating project management concepts and processes into a student team Web development project adds a dimension that exposes students to the realities of effective Web development. This paper will describe the project management approach used in a Web development course in which students build complete Websites. Based upon the written evaluations included with the final project documentation, students feel this project is the most valuable learning experience of the course. Furthermore, a positive relationship is established between the actual Web development and effective project management processes. It is important for students to understand the triple constraints (scope, time, and cost) that must be balanced in business projects.

Recent research has demonstrated pair programming to be an effective model of collaborative learning for millennial students. However, much of the research describes the impact of pair programming in first-year programming courses. This paper highlights experiences using pair programming in an advanced web development programming course. Most of the students in the course were at the junior or senior level and had not been formally introduced to pair programming prior to taking the course. Qualitative data were collected through the use of written reports and surveys. The author discusses what was learned about the impact on students’ attitudes, learning and quality of work. Challenges are also described, as well as recommendations for enhancements.

Mobile web development is one of the fast growing fields in IT. New and powerful front-end development technologies and tools are available to help users with limited experience build mobile-friend...

Digital portfolios have become an essential assessment tool in project-based and student-centered learning environments. Unfortunately, students exert minimal effort in creating digital portfolios because they find the writing component unchallenging. This issue is concerning since existing research predominantly focuses on the use of pre-existing platforms for building digital portfolios. With this concern, there is an opportunity to explore more challenging approaches to digital portfolio creation. Consequently, this study employs a project-based learning (PBL) approach within a website design and development course, where 176 undergraduate students completed weekly coding tasks culminating in a self-coded digital portfolio. Using a one-group posttest-only research design, data were collected through a structured questionnaire that included demographic items and validated scales measuring learning effectiveness and ownership of learning. The survey was administered electronically after students submitted their digital portfolio projects. The results reveal that device ownership shows only weak associations with students’ perceptions, while internet connectivity and self-reported academic performance demonstrate stronger relationships with engagement and ownership of learning. Additionally, prior experience with digital portfolios positively influences students’ engagement, motivation, and ownership of learning. Implications of these findings are discussed for supporting the integration of digital portfolios into technical disciplines. Overall, this study contributes to the literature on PBL methodology, expands our understanding of digital portfolio integration, and underscores the significance of student-centered pedagogies.

Most graduate students and even upper-level undergraduates desire to maximize control of their learning experience. One approach to supporting self-directed learning is to allow students to control course particulars such as assignments and due dates. This presentation describes an approach that allows students to define their own grading rubric for a semester-long software project and then to self-assess their grade on the project according to the rubric. The approach has been employed successfully in a graduate web application design and development course.

Understanding the processes in education, such as the student learning behavior within a specific course, is a key to continuous course improvement. In online learning systems, students’ learning can be tracked and examined based on data collected by the systems themselves. However, it is non-trivial to decide how to extract the desired students’ behavior from the limited data in traditional classroom courses. Software development courses are a domain where student behavior analysis would be especially useful, as continuous teaching improvement in this fast progressing domain is necessary. In this paper, we propose to use process mining for improvement-motivated process analysis of a software development course (web development in particular). To this end, we analyze Git logs of students’ projects to understand their development processes. Process mining has been chosen as it can help us to find a descriptive model of this process. The main contribution of this paper is the detailed methodology of process mining usage for students’ project development analysis, considering various commit characteristics, which are crucial in understanding student coding-behavior patterns. The process mining analysis proved to be very useful, indicating multiple directions for the course improvement, which we also include in this work as a secondary contribution. The third contribution of this work is the summary and discussion of the process mining advantages and current gaps in process mining research for this task. The data we used are made publicly available to other researchers.

Providing accessible open educational resources (OER) is essential for users with impairments to access university resources. To achieve this, web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG) have been developed. In this study, we used the AChecker web accessibility evaluation tool to assess the content of 42 federal university websites in Nigeria and recorded their conformance level to the WCAG. The findings show that at Level A (Minimal Compliance), there were 855 known problems, 55 likely problems, and 7536 potential problems. At Level AA (Acceptable Compliance), 2516 known problems, 58 likely problems, and 15537 potential problems were identified. At Level AAA (Optimal Compliance), 2679 known problems were found, while there were no likely problems, and 16772 potential problems. The results indicated that most websites did not conform to the accessibility guidelines, highlighting the need for educational institutions to comply with WCAG2.1 content standard. The study recommends introducing accessibility training courses in web design and development to ensure effective OER creation for people with diverse abilities. Furthermore, enforcing the implementation of these guidelines by flagging down non-compliant educational websites was suggested. There is a problem of lack of accessibility in federal university websites in Nigeria, leading to unequal access to web content for users with varying abilities. The study aimed to identify aspects of the websites where accessibility needs to be improved and promote diversity and inclusiveness for users with different abilities to have equal access to web content.

The universality of Web application prompts the rapid development of Web development technologies, which has inspired many students and engineering technicians to study and apply them. Through the research of the Web technology and combining the teaching practice, an autonomous learning platform system about Web system development course was designed and developed. The platform system has the characteristics of self-evolution, Web application dynamic embedding, and abundant learning resources. Also, the platform system provides learners with independent, open, collaborative learning space.

Student projects in software engineering courses are traditionally graded according to the features developed/tasks completed by given deadline. This leads to two problems: cascading failure of some students in the course, and "feature hacking" by the students. In order to address these issues, we decided to shift grading to grading applied techniques in a web application development course. In this paper, we present the analysis of the impacts of our decision. For the analysis we use general student performance data from four prior years and three post-shift years, their performance in written exam, project grades in the web application development course for four years (two prior and two post change), and student feedback to the course. The results show that the shift to grading technique use has resulted in improved student exam and future performance among weaker students, reduced drop-out rates, and lowered the student feedback score for the course. The added benefit according to textual feedback from students was that the new grading scheme teaches students the best practices of agile web development better than previously possible.

Within a year of its launch, the University of Moratuwa's open learning platform (open.uom.lk) has over 180,000 registered participants, providing free and open access to a series of asynchronous online courses in software development. Nearly 17,000 people have completed the two foundation courses: Python for Beginners and Web Development for Beginners. Considering the low overall completion rate compared to the total number of registered users, it is important to study the factors contributing to successful completion while promoting meaningful learning. To support the learning process, there are multiple activities like lecture videos, lecture notes, coding playgrounds, lecture slides, assessments, and discussion forums. Thus, this study investigates student behaviour to understand activities that are high in cognitive load and promote active engagement. The study is carried out using learning management system (LMS) user logs and feedback from completed and ongoing students. The elaborative logs with user activities and time stamps help identify the pace of completion by students with different capabilities and learning patterns. The study's findings will be useful to educators because they will be able to design similar LMS platforms that optimise student performance and promote effective learning outcomes. Furthermore, it would be useful to evaluate how students would manage the load in asynchronous online learning programs. Understanding how the learning and assessment activities are related to the completion of the course would enable predicting completion rates and times to properly plan for the employment opportunities for the successful learners.