On site

Students learn valuable lessons in real-world website designs

These days, everybody needs a Website.

More and more organizations across the state are turning to Georgia Southern’s Allen E. Paulson College of Engineering and Information Technology to have their Websites designed for free – and students do all the work.

A pair of courses offered by professors John O’Malley and Philis Wainford allows students to interact with clients, to work together as a group and to design and build fully functional Websites.

With Internet presence becoming a necessity in nearly every walk of life, it’s not just information technology (IT) people signing up for the class. Students from a wide array of majors take the courses to learn the process of Web design.

“If you’re in communications or you’re in print journalism, you’d better know the Web,” said O’Malley, whose students have been designing Websites for clients since 2005. “All of the industries utilize the Web. You need a Web presence, because that’s how people are going to find you. I can’t see how it wouldn’t benefit any student.”

Non-majors typically sign up for IT 3132, while a more advanced version of the course, IT 4235, consists mostly of IT students.

The classes, divided into small project groups each semester, have designed more than 70 Websites over the past six years.

In the spring of 2012, the course took another step into the future, adding mobile sites to the curriculum. Students are still creating pages in standard formats, but the course expanded its services to include mobile Web design to complement standard Web-page displays.

With so many different sizes of screens on a growing list of devices that includes computers, smartphones and tablets, it is important to make sure students leave the course with skills to accommodate all of the current technology. Equally important is making sure the client gets a Website that is compatible on current devices.

“Those are some of the things we’re going to be focusing on in this course in the future,” said O’Malley. “You want to detect the device, detect the operating system and display a presence that is appropriate for your particular screen.”

The course instructs students on becoming proficient with a trio of Adobe programs – Dreamweaver, Photoshop and Flash. The pages designed by the students have included content like bios, contact information, product information and videos based in both Flash and HTML5.

Students have even designed graphics and logos per requests from some clients.

Most of the clients have offered plenty of feedback, but some have been hard to work with.

For the students, that’s just another opportunity to learn.

“They get experience not only with the creation of a Website, but also dealing with clients and working with a team to accomplish a goal,” O’Malley said. “Sometimes the clients are hard to reach. Sometimes the clients don’t like what the students are doing. It’s a good lesson in either case.”

Locally, small businesses, churches and even the Statesboro-Bulloch County Parks and Recreation Department have had their Websites designed by the program, and clients from counties across the state have also benefited. Students commonly bring in clients from their own hometowns.

“The students are all giving service back to the community, which I think is an important lesson,” O’Malley said. “They’re giving back to the communities that have supported them.”

Sample work: southerncyclists.com, seniordashboard.com

—Matt Yogus