Syllabus

Course Overview

This course is for students to learn the modern web. They will expand their HTML and CSS skills to write standards compliant, cross-browser compatible code to build websites that take into account devices of all shapes and sizes.

Students will be challenged to implement HTML5, CSS3, jQuery in their web pages. They will also learn the basics of designing and developing for content management systems.

While there is no textbook assigned to this class, excerpts from books, along with blog posts, video tutorials, and code documentation will be used as learning tools.

Course Objectives

• Be able to demonstrate best practices writing HTML and CSS for the modern web.
• Demonstrate skills to manage domain names and web hosts.
• Demonstrate how to use FTP to upload assets to a web server.
• Design for clients and to solve their problems.
• Know how to account for content management systems in the design process.
• Design for account web pages that are optimized for mobile devices as well as traditional devices.

Communication Department Media Lab Rules

All students of media lab classes have access to College Center, Room M016. Use your Loyola ID card to gain access to the lab and to activate printing. This access means you can do homework and print in the lab whenever you want except for during classes (schedule posted). You are expected to follow posted lab rules. If you need help with your software and hardware questions, call Technical Services at x5555, (410) 617-5555.

Software

Adobe Creative Suite (a.k.a. Creative Cloud) should be loaded on the computers in the lab, however, I discourage the use of Dreamweaver. Expensive software is not needed to learn how to code. We will explore using free text editors such as Atom and more affordable editors such as Sublime Text. If students are not using Dreamweaver or another editor such as Coda or Espresso, they will also need an FTP client to upload assets to their web servers.

Deadlines

Deadlines must be met. Assignments/projects will be due at the beginning of class on the designated date. Grades for late assignments/projects will be lowered the equivalent of one letter grade and will not be accepted more than one class late.

Grading & Course Requirements

Your assignment grades will be a reflection of the design, content, effectiveness, originality, and adherence to the assignment. All projects and assignments must be completed and uploaded to the student's personal website. If it is not on their website, it will not be graded.

Attendance Policy

A student's attendance is essential to succeed in this course, especially since we only meet once a week. Students are expected to attend and be on time to all lectures and exams. Roll will be taken at the beginning of class.

Two absences are the limit allowed before a student’s grade is lowered. Please realize that these absences are not encouraged, but will be accepted without a grade deduction. Each additional class missed will result in a grade deduction in the Participation portion of your course grade. The allowed absences are intended to accommodate illness, emergencies, religious holidays, and all other circumstances. If you are absent, it is your responsibility to catch yourself up in class and makeup missed assignments. Quizzes cannot be made-up following an absence. Exceptions are intended to accommodate illness, emergencies, religious holidays, and university-sponsored trips.

Student Athletes

Each student athlete is required to provide the instructor printouts of documents indicating class absences for athletic events. While absences for mandated athletics events are excuses, missed work is not excused and must be made up. When necessary, negotiate deadline extensions with the course instructor.

Learning Disabilities

Please see the instructor at the beginning of the semester to discuss any special needs related to disabilities. To request academic accommodations for a disability contact the Disability Support Services Office or (410) 617-2062.

Honor Code

Misrepresenting oneself by cheating on quizzes or tests, failing to cite sources for quotations, paraphrasing, or outside media assets, turning in another person’s work, or turning one’s own work for another class or university activity is a serious breach of faith with the academic community, as defined by the Loyola University Honor Code Statement:

The students of Loyola University Maryland are citizens of an academic community that will conduct Itself according to an academic code of honor, following the Jesuit Ideal of cura personalis and keeping within the school motto, “Strong Truths Well Lived.” For more information about the Loyola Honor Code, see http://www.loyola.edu/academic/honorcode

All assignments and projects submitted in this course must be your own work. When an image, text, or code is gathered from the Web, attribution should be given.

Backing Up Your Work

It is your responsibility to backup all work. Loss of work due to any error regardless of it being caused by human, animal, or machine will not relieve you of the responsibility of having your work submitted on time.

To ensure that you don't lose your work, take precautions to store your work in multiple locations. Services such as Dropbox and Google Drive have limited version control systems built in.

Course Schedule

A tentative course schedule has been posted to this website. Please check with the course schedule every week – changes may be made to it by the instructor if circumstances dictate. If schedule changes eliminate a graded course activity, point values for other activities will be adjusted accordingly.