Review of Terry Felke-Morris’ Web Development and Design Foundations with HTML5 (7th edition)

For the IDT 540 course, Systematic Approach to Web and Multimedia Design and Development, one of the two required texts was Web Development and Design Foundations with HTML5 (7th Edition) by Terry Felke-Morris. This is an impressive book, but I struggled with it for the course as it was a very comprehensive read.

I must start by saying that if someone wants to learn how to program in HTML5, or if I was teaching a course just on this language this would be the go-to text. It starts from the beginning with the history of the Internet and goes through an exhaustive description of page layout, how each of the elements on the page is created, and CSS. There are even sections on design hints and how to promote your website and even an introduction to JavaScript.

The book accomplishes all of this with in-depth discussions that are followed up with exercises that the reader can use to actually program what they just learned about. This is what constructivism is all about. It is easy to read, but it has to be taken slowly and there is just a lot of book to go through.

This is all great stuff, but it was just a lot more than what I needed for this course, or for my career, actually (it is 704 pages long and $130). I know that I will probably not go into programming online learning from scratch, but on the other hand it did give me a lot of insight into how web sites can be built. The text is current so I went ahead and kept my copy as I can use portions of it as a reference, but it is not going to be something that I pick up every day…

Thank you for checking out the blog today. Next time we will be taking a look at the other 4th semester course, IDT 545: Emerging Technologies and Issues in Teaching.

Felke-Morris, T. (2015). Web development and design foundations with HTML5 (7th ed.). Boston: Pearson

MSIDT 540: Systematic Approach to Web and Multimedia Design and Development

Hello!

The fourth semester of my CSUF MSIDT program (Fall 2015) included MSIDT 540, Systematic Approach to Web and Multimedia Design and Development. The course objectives were (from syllabus):

- Examine, explain and plan effective web design to facilitate instruction online;

- Utilize the internet to locate resources for research and teaching;

- Critique, assess and evaluate the design of internet pages and sites used for instructional purposes;

- Plan a website or multimedia project for instructional purposes;

- Appraise and synthesize the theoretical basis and issues involved in using the internet in teaching and learning; and

- Research and complete a literature review using APA guidelines, based on a topic related to the teaching and learning process.

These are solid and achievable objectives and I feel that they were met through the course activities and assignments. Students in Cohort 13 were expected to participate in the group discussions and critiques, complete a web search/evaluation project, design a proposal for an instructional multimedia/website project, and write a literature review.

The group discussions were standard fare, and the web evaluations were very straightforward to complete. The real meat of the course was in the project plan and literature review. As I already knew what my final project was going to be I spent a lot of time writing and revising these documents, as much of the material could be carried forward to the final semester to be used for the thesis and instructional project. I was very fortunate to have two excellent editing partners who helped make sure that everything I was writing was heading in the right direction. For anybody else who goes through this program, I cannot recommend highly enough that they make good connections and have friends from their cohort who will be available and committed to the peer review process.

Supporting the course were two main texts:

-- Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (6th Edition)

-- Web development and design foundations with HTML5 (7th edition) by Terry Felke-Morris

I really struggled with the HTML5 book, as it was really huge and I had trouble sifting it down to a level where it helped me with the Dreamweaver project that I was completing in the concurrent 545 course. Thank god for Lynda tutorials!

Thanks for checking out the blog today, and next we will take a more in-depth look at the Felke-Morris text that we used for this course.

Mahalo!