The Web Development track
Modules in this track focus on web development. But, as can be seen by the discussion about and the list of modules below, this covers a wide range of topics. The track contains 12 modules. Seven are taken by students in the Basic Certificate program. Five are taken by students in the Advanced Certificate program.
Basic Certificate Module 1:
Designing for the User
Many church and webmasters do not have previous exposure to usability, user experience, user-centered design, interaction design, interface design, information design, and information architecture, which are similar but not identical disciplines that draw from each other. It's very important for church and parish webmasters to be familiar with principles from these fields of study.
Because the terms are similar, we've provided their definitions below. Definitions are from their respective Wikipedia entries.
• Usability is "a term used to denote the ease with which people can employ a particular tool or other human-made object in order to achieve a particular goal." By extension, this is applied to software and websites, also.
• User experience is "a term used to describe the overall experience and satisfaction a user has when using a product or system."
• User centered design is "a design philosophy and a process in which the needs, wants, and limitations of the end user of an interface or document are given extensive attention at each stage of the design process."
• Interaction design "concentrates on the aspects of the interface [with software, a website, etc.] that define and present its behavior over time, with a focus on developing the system to respond to the user's experience and not the other way around."
• Interface design "focus[es] on the user's experience and interaction. Where traditional graphic design seeks to make the object or application physically attractive, the goal of user interface design is to make the user's interaction as intuitive as possible."
The first module in this track, then, draws from these varied but related disciplines to help students to plan and implement websites that are user-centered.
More Basic Certificate modules
In the second module, students learn the principles of information architecture, which is "concerned with creating organizational and navigational schemes that allow users to move through site content efficiently and effectively." Source: Jesse James Garrett, The Elements of User Experience (New York: AIGA and Berkeley: New Riders [co-publishers], 2003), p. 94.
In the third module, students learn the basics of information design. This is a "term [that] has come to be used specifically for graphic design that has the purpose of displaying information effectively, rather than just attractively, or for the purpose of self expression by the designer as artist" (source: Wikipedia).
Other modules in this track that are part of the Basic Certificate program teach students how to write for the web, how to increase their church or parish websites' ranking by search engines, and the ins and outs of low-cost "shared-server" web hosting accounts.
The seventh and final module in the Basic Certificate program is a survey of web Content Management Systems (CMS's): how they work, what's available, what features to look for, etc. For many churches, using a proprietary or an open-source CMS is the best solution for their website needs.
Advanced Certificate modules
For the Advanced Certificate students, there are modules on developing relational databases, which are often used on website "back ends" to store data; project management; e-commerce principles; VPS and dedicating hosting — both are costlier web hosting options that give churches and parishes greater control, freedom, and responsibility over the hosting of their site; and a survey of proprietary web development applications, including those from Microsoft, Adobe, and Sun.
(The School for Church Webmasters focuses on the LAMP web development framework. This stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP [or Perl or Python] — all of which are free, open-source software. However, it is important for students to be familiar also with popular proprietary technologies.)
The final module in the Advance Certificate covers the special requirements of designing websites for mobile devices such as PDAs.
Modules in this track
Modules in the Basic Certificate program:
Module 1—User-Centered Web Design
Module 2—Information Architecture
Module 3—Information Design
Module 4—Writing for the Web
Module 5—Search Engine Optimization
Module 6—The Shared Server Hosting Environment
Module 7—Principles of Web Content Management
Modules in the Advanced Certificate program:
Module 8—Relational Database Design
Module 9—Basics of Project Management
Module 10—Basics of e-Commerce
Module 11—Using VPS or Dedicated Hosting
Module 12—Survey of Proprietary Technologies
Module 13—Designing for Mobile Devices