LCSCI7224 Web Services Course Descriptor

Course Summary

This course offers the fundamentals for understanding modern Web application design and development. It focuses on software development issues of integrating multiple modern software tools and technologies to produce websites that are dynamic, data-driven and interactive. There is a particular focus on sustainable development.

Course Aims

The aims of the course are:

• Introduce students to Web development through practice 
• Apply industry standards and best practice to Web application development
• Complete a full project using skill applications

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of the course, students will be able to:

Knowledge and Understanding

Subject Specific Skills

Transferable and Professional Skills

Teaching and Learning

This course has a dedicated Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) page with a syllabus and range of additional resources (e.g. readings, question prompts, tasks, assignment briefs, discussion boards) to orientate and engage you in your studies.

The scheduled teaching and learning activities for this course are:

Lectures/Labs: Contact hours are typically a mix of weekly lectures and lab sessions, totalling up to 50 scheduled hours:

• Version 1: All sessions in the same sized group, or 
• Version 2: most of the sessions in larger groups; some of the sessions in smaller groups

Faculty hold regular ‘office hours’, which are opportunities for students to drop in or sign up to explore ideas, raise questions, or seek targeted guidance or feedback, individually or in small groups.

Students are to attend and participate in all the scheduled teaching and learning activities for this course and to manage their directed learning and independent study.

Indicative total learning hours for this course: 150

Employability Skills

• Communication skills 
• Team-based project skills
• Programming skills

Assessment

Formative

Students will be formatively assessed during the course by means of set assignments. These do not count towards the end of year results but will provide students with developmental feedback. Set assignments will also amplify problem-solving skills useful for the set exercises and develop software components that form part of the students’ projects.

Summative

Assessment will be in two forms:

Both the set exercises and the project will be assessed in accordance with the assessment aims set out in the Programme Specification.

Feedback

Students will receive formal feedback in a variety of ways: written (including via email correspondence); oral (within one-to-one tutorials or on an ad hoc basis) and indirectly through discussion during group tutorials. 

Feedback is provided on summative assessment and is made available to the student either via email, the VLE or another appropriate method.

Indicative Reading

Note: Comprehensive and current reading lists for the course are produced annually in the Course Guide or other documentation provided to students, primarily based on the official documentation for the languages, libraries, tools, and frameworks used in class.

Indicative Topics

Students will study the following topics: 

• Web design and development best practices and industry standards
• Client-server software development
• HTML5, JavaScript and CSS
• JSON, Ajax and REST API
• Web application security and performance