Web Certificate

The Certificate in Web Site Management is designed to meet the demand for business graduates who can develop and manage web sites. The Certificate is offered through WWU's Internet Studies Center in conjunction with the Decision Sciences Department. The Web Site Management track is one of three certification tracks offered by the Internet Studies Center. The certificate is a supplement to a bachelors degree and awarded with the bachelors degree.

A Certificate in Web Site Management provides graduates with both the technical skills needed to manage web sites as well as the managerial skills needed for working with content providers. The program is designed specifically for MIS students, but is open to all majors. The Certificate is earned upon completion of a series of six Internet-related courses, two of which may be counted as MIS elective courses.

The six courses required to earn a Certificate in Web Site Management are:

CS 102 Computer-Mediated Communications

Internet skills, with emphasis on the Internet as a medium of political and business communication, research, cultural exchange, and worldwide collaboration. Basic principles of effective Web site organization and design. Lab.

CS 202 Interactive Web Page Development

Covers interactive languages: JavaScript, XML, web page design, interrelationship between the client browser and the server. Students will modify and write JavaScript; eXtesible Markup Language (XML), and study Information Architecture (IA) (Prerequisite CS 112).

MIS 314 Fundamentals of Web Site Development and Management

This course teaches you how to build interactive, database-driven web sites using Active Server Pages (ASP). Topics include VBScript, Active Data Objects, form processing, server-side includes, database design and normalization, SQL and maintaining state on the web. Each student builds an on-line, database driven storefront with a shopping cart and checkout process. The course also extends your knowledge of good web design principles from CS 112 and CS 202 (Prerequisite CS 112).

MIS 324 Intermediate Web Site Development and Management

The primary focus of this course is server-side programming using Microsoft ASP.NET. This relatively new technology is fully object-oriented, event-driven and offers significant advantages over "Classic ASP" in the areas of scalability, reliability, and functionality. By the end of this course you will have constructed a dynamic, database-driven ASP.NET on-line music store (sample site) (Prerequisite MIS 314).

MIS 424 E-Commerce System Management

Covers the many issues related to designing, building, and managing e-commerce sites, as well as more advanced ASP.NET topics such as web services, screen scraping and application configuration. Topics include analyzing server logs, server security, selection of appropriate software, server software configuration, security, site maintenance and interface with legacy systems. Students also convert part of their MIS 314 on-line store to PHP (Prerequisite MIS 324).

CS 403 Internship or Practicum in Web Development

This course rounds out the classroom experiences with actual Web development on a live site. Evaluation for this work will be determined, in part, by results such as usability and user acceptance. Students will participate in either an internship or a practicum.

Internship

The Center will work with companies participating in the standards committee to facilitate the hiring of interns for web development jobs off-campus. The requirements for the internship are that it provide an actual team-oriented development experience, provide an intellectual challenge in analysis and design, and that there is constructive communication between the Center faculty and the job supervisor regarding performance.

Practicum

Students who are not able to participate in an off-campus internship will be able to obtain real work experience within the Center through a practicum course. This course will form teams of students with all of the tracks represented and provide the team with a complete (and real) Web site development problem. The Center will maintain contacts with local small businesses and non-profit organizations that are in need of Web presence or e-commerce support. Student teams will be assigned to these projects. Oversight by Center faculty will ensure that the students get an experience equivalent to an internship.

For more information on the Web Site Management Certificate Program::

Internet Studies center web site
Julie Marx, Internet Studies Center advisor, 360-650-2300
Professor Martin Granier, Director of the Internet Studies Program, granier@wwu.edu, 360-650-6879
Professor Chris Sandvig, College of Business and Economics, csandvig@wwu.edu, 360-650-7952