Pride in the craft

For the past few weeks I have been working through the assessments of our students’ major projects. This is always a large chunk of work but always a pleasure to see all their hard work paying off. The marks are still being checked and approved, so it is far too early to call anyone graduated just yet, but I could not wait to write this down and just capture this moment of joy. I am so very proud of them.

Having had glimpses of their ongoing progress throughout the summer, I knew we would see good work. The major project starts in term one with the concept. In term two, we have crits for different aspects of the work, and the summer is spent designing and building the site. We see their final presentations in September before submission and our students have about a week to finalise their projects and reports. And I really should not have been surprised by much during assessments, but I was…

Many of the projects went much further than we’d hoped across the whole range of marks, not just at the top. And as things aren’t signed off yet, I can’t show you the projects just yet, but you have to take my word for it, they are lovely.

Craft shining through

There were many highlights. We encourage our students to favour clean semantic markup over convoluted messes and their code overall in these final websites shows that they took everything on board. Accessibility and inclusive design were shining beacons across every project and report. This was treated with such care in both design and code, and explained so well that it was clear how much they all have learned. And not only was it implemented and explained as an inherent necessity, it was highlighted as an important aspect of good design. It just warmed my heart. (◠‿◠)

The designs were a result of plenty of exploration and many iterations, which were all very detailed and quite specific. The rationale behind each change was clearly explained and, just as importantly, very well executed. Simply wonderful.

The reports

The major project reports are quite a big piece of writing and quite a challenge. And the standard was so much higher than I’d hoped for. Students declared the tools they’d used from testing tools to AI and described how those tools helped them in producing their final site. Some of course were more successful than others at finding the right approach. But this is all part of their learning journey. What struck me most was how honest and transparent they were about where they hit walls and how they used AI to support their work through difficult aspects.

I know that many in education are torn and unsure about the use of AI tools for writing especially. Many feel that it is no longer the students’ own writing and I would say, after this assessment round especially, I have to disagree. Any tool like this is only useful if the prompts are thorough and specific and if the output is used with great care. In these reports the students’ voice came through very clearly. I could tell whose it was from the phrasing, the details they chose to discuss and the passion for particular parts of the work.

Feedback from real people

During our teaching and workshops, as well as presentations, we place great emphasis on the importance of feedback. We use Tusk, which is a beautiful little tool: Students can create their own page, add a prompt, or not, to ask people for feedback. Anyone giving feedback simply puts a comment on the page and can choose to leave their name, or not. And this has greatly helped with everyone being able to give their input and the students themselves afterwards being able to collect it quite easily. The page itself has an expiration date and will be deleted and disappear after a set time.

During presentations, students share their link and go ahead with their presentation. Everyone else in the room has the page open and is able to write their thoughts as they watch. My favourite parts of the reports were where students quoted those comments verbatim and explained why they mattered and how they influenced their work going forward.

It was wonderful to read reactions to those feedback notes: some students commented that feedback was quite difficult to read at times, but that it prompted them to look into certain aspects more closely and to address specific aspects, such as interaction or layout. Others stated that comments helped them realise that their design was on the right track and it gave them confidence to move forward. And it was clear looking at these project websites how that feedback had helped shape the final version. It was wonderful to read how students recognised how real people’s feedback was insightful and useful to help refine their work.

Prototyping

Another favourite highlight of mine was students reflecting on how their prototyping through to final production went. Many stated how they’d wished they hadn’t spent so much time prototyping in tools like Figma. They wrote about how prototyping parts of the site in HTML and CSS, as they had for other projects throughout the year, was quicker and far more effective. As I prototype in HTML and CSS myself, I always talk about this during our sessions ~ my point is that designing in the browser is a much more productive way to work. And it made me so proud to see that they reached this conclusion themselves, from their own experiences, and that they felt it important to mention this in their reports.

Looking ahead

This is a very difficult time for our industry, but our students are honest about their process, skilled, hardworking and productive with the tools used in teams in our field of work, and they really care about the craft. This is what makes me very hopeful for them and ever so proud to have been part of their journey. (◠‿◠)

And all I’d like to say to my students is very well done, all of you. Now, go out there and make the web a better place. ツ