Vefþróun@Tækniskóli

Projects' Structure

The course is composed of multiple Projects, each containing the following components: 

  • Design Research Module
  • Coding Research Module
  • Product Development (planning + execution/management + consolidation)

With each Project the students gradually increase their knowledge on web development,, first with the Research Modules to familiarize themselves and learn the building blocks concerning the Project and then creating an actual Product with a team of collaborators.

Research modules

Each of the Research Modules is composed of a list of Subjects related to the Product Development phase that follows their completion. These Subjects are comprised of:

  1. A Description
  2. A set of Resources (e.g. books, articles, tutorials, and videos references)
  3. One or more Deliverables, which represent the construction of that knowledge by the student (e.g. the creation of a working demo or an article about that Subject)

The Research Modules can be explored in a non-linear manner, depending on the student’s personal interests. This process does not have to be restricted to the listed topics, the student is encouraged to expand on it and create experiments related to their personal interests.

The assessment of the Research Modules is made through a two-step process:

  1. Peer assessment
    Each deliverable must be reviewed by classroom colleagues, who need to look at the resultant work and emit constructive criticism, followed by a “pass” or “no pass” vote. If enough “pass” votes are given, the deliverable is considered to be done. Otherwise the student needs to review the work and submit it again for peer review.
  2. Giving feedback
    Every student is required to review their peers’ work in each Project. This feedback is given by analysing a submitted work, giving written constructive criticism and a “pass” or “no pass” vote. 

    This process does not have to be done in a linear fashion and points are accumulated with each feedback given, which is how they compose part of the Project’s final grade. Note that the feedback itself is given a subjective “quality measure” by the receiver, which affects its worth and value.

Please refer to the Grading section for further information on metrics.

Collaborative Product Development

Once the Research Modules have been assessed and passed the students can proceed to communicate with their peers and assemble a team in order to take on the Product Development phase, which consists of a Framework describing a line of work and within which the team has freedom to create anything they wish, according to the group’s interests. 

The Framework usually contains elements of project management, design and coding, meaning that the team needs to be assembled in such a way that all skills necessary to accomplish the task are available within the group. Note that this means having to wait for some time until a team is ready to work on the Product. If such a wait happens the student can go ahead and start on other Research Modules or Product Developments.

The group is expected to self-organize in order to manage the whole process, making use of project management tools and techniques learned in previous Workshops (such as the ones available in the introductory Project) as a way to ensure good productivity.

The Product Development phase must be, for the most part, a collaborative endeavour, but in specific cases, when conditions for such are not met, an individual approach can be given, being 2 turns the limit for these cases in the whole length of the course.

The assessment of the Product Development is made by a small group of industry professionals (often from management, design and programming background), to which a presentation (containing a demo component) of the project must be done. Please refer to the Grading section for further information on metrics.

Retrospective meeting

Upon completion of the Project the group takes on a Retrospective meeting to evaluate the whole process and identify the positive aspects or the process as well as the ones in which they can improve during the next Project.

Portfolio

Once the Project is done, each student should add the resulting product to their portfolio (personal website or social media profile such as Dribbble or Behance), which should contain multiple projects by the end of the course.

Exceptions

There are notable exceptions to this Project structure:

  • On Project 2 the student is asked to use a certain amount of hours in different activities that can help in his/her integration in the web development community, which does not involve necessarily doing specific research or following a framework for the creation of a product.
  • On Project 7 the student is free to explore the trends in the fringes of web technologies and create a product with the selected topic, not necessarily following specific guidelines.

Project 8

 is composed of an Internship