Web Design Skills Research Articles

Educational content of modern web-developer training

The article provides an answer to the frequently asked question about what to teach students so that they can easily enter the area of web development and become sought-after specialists in the modern IT industry upon graduation. We completed a review of publications and scientific discussions on this subject, performed an analysis of the relevant professional standards as well as the transformation dynamics of the requirements set out by employers for web developers. In addition, the paper examines the demand for designing educational programs. We interviewed representatives of professional communities and university graduates to understand the challenges which former students face while seeking employment in the field of web development and design. Six main skill groups of a modern successful specialist have been identified. They include basic web development skills, web programming skills, web design skills, development skills and development management skills, web resource promotion skills, universal skills. For each group, we identified the main skills and tools which are advisable to be studied as part of the educational program. It has been discovered that training should be based on using skill-oriented educational technologies since solving specific practical problems will enable each student to form their own future workspace. We also created a model of a graduate who aspires to work in the field of web development.

Applying the design-based learning model to foster undergraduates\u2019 web design skills: the role of knowledge integration

The purpose of this research was to design a course based on the design-based learning (DBL) model to improve undergraduates’ web design skills, and to explore the differences in learning effectiveness of students with different levels of knowledge integration. The quasi-experimental design was adopted in this study. Ninety-two participants studying general education courses in a university in southern Taiwan were selected to participate in this study. The instruments included the Web Design Skills Test and the Knowledge Integration Scale. The study found that the use of the DBL strategy in teaching could improve the web design skills of the experimental group students, especially those students with insufficient web design skills in the initial stage. In addition, students with a high level of knowledge integration had better improvement in their web design skills. The implication of this research is that DBL is a suitable web design skills training strategy for students with insufficient web design skills. If students could be reminded to integrate knowledge while studying, their learning outcomes may be better.

Publishing with Open Journal Systems (OJS): the engaged university and library support at the University of Stavanger

Increasing the role of libraries in academic journal publishing activities and journal hosting has become an important subject in the library world in the past few years. The purpose of this study is to present the role of the libraries at University of Stavanger (UiS) in the context of library-as-publisher. Within this category, open access (OA) journal publishing has been a popular service offered by libraries, rapidly attracting researchers' attention. The University Libraries at University of Stavanger (UiS) have a long history of promoting and supporting open access initiatives. The Libraries have established and continue to build, host and maintain an operative open access institutional repository (UiS Brage) for scientific works in full text.
 From 2018, UiS libraries started using a journal management system to facilitate the open access scholarly publishing and therefore support transferring and updating of established the existing journals and the lunching of new ones. The Open Journal Systems (OJS) from Public Knowledge Project (PKP) is used which is the most common journal management system being discussed frequently in literature.
 Currently, the UiS Libraries repository host four active open access journals, with some others under development. All these journals reside within the same OJS implementation with the same design and layout on top, however, at the individual journal level there are also options for some customization.
 UiS libraries initially support all the steps of the journal creation and development process but train the editors and the subsequent users to engage in some part of the process. The library IT-Engineer and Information Technology Department (IT) manage OJS server, maintain the OJS database and software, and performs the layout and design customization and development and initial technical configuration for the new journals.
 From the viewpoint of IT, there is a need for several technical skills such as web design skills to customize the style sheets and web layout, graphic design skills to produce banners, logos and cover pages whereas the editorial workflow process may require skills on copy-editing and proofreading of articles. OJS is a template-based platform but when it comes to front-end design, it has its limitation. There are certain limitations which make it difficult to get to the details of the article. For instance, when an article comes with a long abstract or number of references, the web-page becomes unfriendly. Another challenge is when PKP launches a new OJS update. Some features cannot be migrated, and you may lose them. Furthermore, users may find it hard to adapt to the new version. The biggest challenge to the OJS is the learning curve. There are some faculty members who have had some frustrations with the software.
 While it is a free and open source platform, the time, technical skills and programming abilities are still associated with the costs. In this poster we provide you with the challenges and lessons learned so far by the libraries at Stavanger University.

Metadata Makeover

Catalogers have become fluent in information technology such as web design skills, HyperText Markup Language (HTML), Cascading Stylesheets (CSS), eXensible Markup Language (XML), and programming languages. The knowledge gained from learning information technology can be used to experiment with methods of transforming one metadata schema into another using various software solutions. This paper will discuss the use of eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT) for repurposing, editing, and reformatting metadata. Catalogers have the requisite skills for working with any metadata schema, and if they are excluded from metadata work, libraries are wasting a valuable human resource.

Potential of Interactive Art with Web Design skills

Potential of Interactive Art with Web Design skills

Developing an Interactive Web-Based Learning Program on Skin Cancer: the Learning Experiences of Clinical Educators

Web-based learning in medical education is rapidly growing. However, there are few firsthand accounts on the rationale for and development of web-based learning programs. We present the experience of clinical educators who developed an interactive online skin cancer detection and management course in a time-efficient and cost-efficient manner without any prior skills in computer programming or technical construction of web-based learning programs. We review the current state of web-based learning including its general advantages and disadvantages as well as its specific utility in dermatology. We then detail our experience in developing an interactive online skin cancer curriculum for primary care clinicians. Finally, we describe the main challenges faced and lessons learned during the process. This report may serve medical educators who possess minimal computer programming and web design skills but want to employ the many strengths of web-based learning without the huge costs associated with hiring a professional development team.

The design and development of Genarrator at Bournemouth University

Genarrator is a practice-based and pedagogy-driven project researching ways of enabling creative writers and designers to enter the world of interactive fiction. The overall aim of the project is to develop a software platform (also called Genarrator) for students who want to create interactive digital fiction, but who do not have the web-design skills to use professional-level tools such as Flash. Funded by The Centre for Excellence in Media Practice (CEMP) at BU, James Pope is extending his empirical studies of readers' responses to interactive fiction, and expanding his teaching of new-media writing, by designing, developing and testing Genarrator. This paper reports on the empirical research which has led to Genarrator, outlines the role of the CETL in supporting the project, and explains the features and value of the Genarrator platform.

Information system professionals’ knowledge and application gaps toward Web design guidelines

Web design guidelines are adopted by many usability evaluation methods as one of the criteria for success, while usability is proven to significantly impact Website performance. Since Web design guidelines cover a broad range of system and interface design solutions, knowledge of them can be considered as a prominent indicator of Web design skills for information systems (IS) professionals. This study empirically assessed how much IS professionals know and apply Web design guidelines via a survey to 500 randomly selected companies from Taiwan’s Fortune 2000 corporations. As expected, the knowledge–application gaps of IS professionals were statistically significant in all Web design guideline categories. Meanwhile, certain guideline categories were proven to be more difficult to acquire or apply than others. Finally, degree, gender, experience, training hours, and courses taken were also proven to be determining factors for Web design guideline skills. Implications for developing Web design guideline skills are also discussed.

Wikis in the workplace: how Wikis can help manage knowledge in library reference services

This article explores how wikis can be used in library reference services to manage knowledge and why they should be used in this environment. The article begins with a description of wikis, then covers knowledge management and the systems that support knowledge management, specifically collaborative and conversational technologies. Next, the author discusses how wikis can be used as a knowledge management system and explores the organizational applications. Finally, a discussion follows on how wikis can be used to support knowledge management in library reference services with some examples of wikis as both private and public knowledge repositories and as collaborative workspaces. Introduction Named after the Hawaiian term for “quick,” wikis are interactive Web sites to which users can contribute. In a wiki, any user with a Web browser can add entirely new pages or add new content to existing pages, as well as change or delete existing information. Users can also edit the organization of the wiki, in addition to the content, and need not know HTML or have Web design skills since Web-based forms provide the simple editing interface. The software that runs a wiki is called a wiki engine and there are many free open source wiki engines available to run wikis (e.g., MediaWiki), as well as online wiki providers who will host a wiki for you, (e.g., Seedwiki). Although some wikis are intended for the public, like Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org) or Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki (http://www.libsuccess.org), this technology is now being adopted by organizations as a collaborative tool for managing knowledge among their employees. A wiki can be used in multiple ways as a conversational knowledge management system to support the goals of many organizations, including libraries. This paper explores how wikis can be used in library reference services to manage knowledge and why they are well-suited to this environment.

Web design skills and competencies: an empirical analysis

The availability of proper human capital represents a key-factor in order to support the current fast pace of diffusion of Internet-based applications. The careful assessment of the skills and competencies required to manage and develop Internet technologies in different application domains represents a necessary step to solve the emerging skill shortage and skill gap problems. While most existing analyses of skill needs in information and communication technologies deal with broad professional categories, the paper focuses the attention on a specific professional figure, the Web designer. By resorting to an on-line questionnaire administered to a sample of Italian Web designers, the paper shows that jobholders recognise greater usefulness to organisational rather than technical knowledge domains. However, perceived skill gaps are larger in the case of technical skills and competencies. Moreover, specialisation paths are emerging.

The authors of academic library home pages: their identity, training and dissemination of Web construction skills

This article reports on a study designed to identify the authors of academic library home pages and to investigate the nature of their training and their use of newly‐acquired Web design skills. The major finding of the study is that librarians more often than non‐librarians are assuming the responsibility for writing home pages for academic libraries in very large public colleges and universities. In addition to professional identity, factors such as length of service to an institution, current job title, and prior education play a role in determining the likelihood that an individual will write the home page for his or her employing library. Learning the skills needed to write a home page requires time for training. Institutional support for training is considered vital and well worth the investment because training is very often disseminated beyond the home page authors. Teaching others Web construction skills is one of the ways library home page authors most frequently apply their newly acquired abilities.