I believe in the Responsive Web Design (RWD) approach (don’t worry, among other things in life :-)
- I’ve published several posts about RWD in the past few months.
- I focused on RWD in my February column for University Business.
- I asked Stewart Foss from eduSyle to design a 4-week online course about RWD for our industry and Nick DeNardis to do a technical review of the syllabus.
- I even attended the first session of this course as student (and didn’t perform too well actually, as teaching a course on social media marketing campaigns for higher ed at the same time did take all that was left of my personal bandwidth ;-)
When I was able to find the time to focus on the course work and take part in the class discussions on responsive web design for higher education, I really learned a great deal from the instructor but also from my great classmates, all working in universities and colleges in the US and the UK. I plan to take the course again in a few weeks to actually get to work my way through the full conversion of the web template I started during this course.
While I’m not proud of my final grade (so let’s stop talking about it ;-), I feel even more passionate about this really smart approach to the multiple-connected-device challenge EVERY higher ed web designer is going to have to tackle very, very soon (that is if s/he hasn’t yet).
I understand that you might see me as a biased course reviewer (plus, you know, who wants to hear from a D+ student? ;0), so I’m sure you’d be interested in what the other students in this first session had to say about this Higher Ed Experts course on Responsive Web Design for Higher Ed.
Students were asked to complete a short evaluation survey about the course:
- For 5 out of the 6 students who completed the survey (I didn’t – for obvious reasons) this course helped develop their knowledge and expertise of responsive web design as it pertains to their job. The student who didn’t feel that way had already done some extensive work with RWD.
- Students were asked to grade the course on a scale from 1 (bad) to 5 (excellent). The average of the course grades given by students was 4.16/5.
- Students were also asked to grade their instructor on the same scale. Stewart scored a 4/5 for this first session and has already started to become even more responsive to the needs of his students ;-)
Moreover the students made great suggestions for improvement that were implemented right away in the second session that started last Monday including a couple on the way to reframe some of the original class discussions, suggestions submitted by the student who wasn’t totally pleased by the course (so, Thanks a lot! You know who you are :-)
In the survey, we also asked students what they would tell people thinking about taking this course on Responsive Web Design for Higher Ed and here are the answers we got:
“I highly recommend this course. The discussion component allows you to network with other higher ed web developers with similar interests, namely RWD. And the assignments challenge you to take a stab at converting your college web design into a responsive design.”
“The course on Responsive Web Design was an in depth look into the theories and practice of Responsive design. The readings, assignments, and video tutorials delivered a solid foundation of the concepts. I am confident that the course will save me a great deal of time in the future as I move to designing responsive web pages.”
“As a person who did not receive any formal training in web design, I found this course both easy to understand and challenging. I walked away with more knowledge about design, from a technical standpoint, than I originally thought. I strongly recommend designers register for this course – even if it is just to have an understanding of what responsive design is about.”
“Overall I completed the course feeling like I had acquired a solid foundation of responsive design. Thank you.”
Emily Ladendorf, University of Iowa/Belin-Blank Center (IA)
“This class provided a balanced look at responsive web design, and I was impressed not only by the instructor, but by the other students and what they brought to the course.”
So, what MORE can I tell you about this 4-week online course on Responsive Web Design?
7 8 out of the 12 students from the first session earned the Higher Ed Experts certificate, an official document confirming they completed and passed this course with a final grade above 80/100 (and as you understood by now, I didn’t :(.
There are still a few seats left for the third scheduled session.
Given the interest for the course (the first and second sessions were sold out very quickly), we might schedule a few more this year, but we haven’t set the dates yet.
So, if you’re interested, I definitely recommend registering as soon as possible for the next session starting on March 26, 2012:
http://higheredexperts.com/rwd
Got questions about the course?
Just ask away by posting a comment below or sending an email to karine@higheredexperts.com.
