175+Morris

No web professional left behind: educating the next generation || Terry Morris, Harper College, Illinois, United States, tmorris@harpercollege.edu Jeff Brown, Damascs High School, Maryland, United States, jeffrey.todd.brown@gmail.com Christopher Schmitt, Heat Vision, Florida, United States, schmitt@christopher.org Rob Dickerson, Pennsylvania State University, Pennsylvania, United States, rob@robdickerson.com || Far too often, students aspiring to be web professionals leave school with a degree but without adequate training to prepare them for the real world. The Web Standards Project (WaSP) announces a living curriculum to help schools, colleges and universities bridge the gap between educators and industry best practices.
 * **Submission ID 175** ||
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Since March 2008, The WaSP Education Task Force has been working on The WaSP Curriculum Framework (http://www.webstandards.org/2008/07/31/announcing-the wasp-curriculum-framework/). The WaSP Curriculum Framework (WCF) aims to identify the skill sets and competencies that aspiring Web design professionals need to acquire to prepare them for their chosen careers, as well as resources that will help educators.

The WCF is an interdisciplinary living curriculum framework that will continually adapt to the industry, and will include the best practices of web design, graphic design production, front-end web development (including (X)HTML, CSS, JavaScript), information architecture, usability, accessibility, findability, and professional development. It will be a modular series of courses, so schools around the world can adopt and integrate single courses, course groupings, or the entire curriculum. The content will be published under a Creative Commons license and will be open for all educational initiatives.

Topics for discussion: • What’s the disconnect between education and industry? • How are shortcomings in education impacting industry? • How do we solve the problem? • Introduction to The WaSP Curriculum Framework • Course overviews • Recommended course dependencies • Learning competencies describing what students must master upon successful course completion • Ideas and examples of course activities and assignments to provide for assessment of student learning competencies • Recommended textbooks and readings • A list of helpful resources, tools, and utilities specific to each course that will help both educators and students • Concept of a living, open curriculum • How can attendees get involved? || General session Panel discussion For all audiences ||
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