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Jenna North

LIS 4934

4/7/2024

Assignment: Reflective Essay

The Information Science related field that I am interested in pursuing is web

design. I also would more specifically be interested in the UI design aspect of web

design or project development. As I concentrated on Web Development Technologies I

felt as though that part of my interests was prepared for. Although the only courses that

introduced that actual process of web development were some of my later courses I feel

as though those courses prepared me with the basics of web development. Two of the

most helpful courses for web development were WWW page design/management (LIS

3361) and Web Design Technologies (LIS 4365). Both of these courses taught me the

basics of how to create my own website, configure it, make it both visually appealing

and accessible, and then publish it online. I did not however get too much information

on specifically UI design but that was not included in my concentration as much so that

is understandable.

There were a few things about this major that I tended to not be the happiest

with. Mainly my biggest issue was the lack of coding courses. Of course, you have an

intro to computer science course or an intro to coding course but after that there were

only a maximum of 3 coding courses out of all of the courses for the major. A lot of the

other courses also tended to feel a bit redundant as they all mostly focused on ethics,

communication, behaviors, and the concepts behind information science which are all
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important yes. However, all of these courses, especially if you were to take most of

them at the same time tended to blend together and you ended up learning most of the

same things in all of the courses. Also, I do indeed believe that these concepts are

important to learn do not get me wrong however when you are in a major with a

concentration that is primarily about being able to code and develop websites it may be

more important to include more courses based on that area. I don’t believe that things

like an online form were negative actually I feel as though seeing as the courses were

based on doing things online and in programming software that it makes sense to have

an online format. I do wish that more professors had either video content or remote

lectures as it felt like a lot of it ended up being self-taught.

I think that if as mentioned above more coding based courses were introduced

even along side those more theory based courses it would greatly improve the program.

As currently the only coding based courses have been WWW page design and

management, we design technologies, and if you elected to take a programming based

introduction course. As well as this, as I have said previously, having professors do

more video or zoom lectures in order to have a bit more in depth and visual aspects to

the courses as I and many others can tend to be more visual learners.

Currently I do not plan to go back to college specifically for additional education

however I most definitely would like to take additional courses pertaining to web

development. This is just to get a further understanding as well as learn more ways that

I can advance my sites and make them much more visually appealing and more

accessible to users. With web development things are constantly changing and

advancing as well as overall style preferences are ever changing and therefore it is
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extremely important to keep up to date with all the different advancements and

preferences.

Other than what I have stated above I don’t feel as though I have any other

suggestions for the program. I enjoyed it very much overall and although I have gone a

bit heavy on the suggestions above, I genuinely have learned so much from this course

and it has helped me significantly on my journey to professional careers in web

development. I think with some minor changes that this course could prove to be an

even more amazing experience and introduction to the world of information science and

web development.

Here is the link to my e-portfolio!

https://jenna-north-portfolio.weebly.com/