TRENDS IN TEACHING WEB-BASED DEVELOPMENT

A Survey of Pedagogy in Web Development Courses

Ralph F. Grove

Department of Computer Science, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA, 22807, USA

Keywords: Web Development, Pedagogy, Computer Science Education.

Abstract: Many universities now offer a computer science course covering the development of information systems

for the World Wide Web. Over the last ten years much has been written about experiences gained in

developing and teaching such a course. This paper summarizes these experiences, including curriculum,

common problems, and lessons learned. It also provides a suggested model curriculum and argues for more

emphasis on fundamental concepts in addition to the standard core set of Web development technologies.

1 INTRODUCTION

Since its invention 15 years ago, the World Wide

Web has become an important medium for

commerce, entertainment, education, and

communication, and the Web now affects virtually

every part of our lives in some way. To computer

scientists, the Web is an exciting phenomenon

because of the revolution in software technology and

computer applications that it has spawned. In the

past decade, many computer science educators have

come to regard the Web as a unique environment

with respect to teaching software development, and

courses focusing on developing applications for the

Web have appeared at many universities. The

experiences of those educators include several

common problems related to teaching this course

and some common solutions as well.

This paper presents a retrospective on 10 years of

teaching Web development in colleges and

universities, primarily in computer science

programs. It summarizes curriculum design,

experiences, problems, and concerns described in

ten papers published primarily in CS education

conferences and journals from 1998 to 2004. In

chronological order, the papers describe these

courses. Each course is one semester in length unless

otherwise noted.

• Web Development Technologies (Lim 1998)

• Internet Administration (3 weeks, 24 total

contact hours) (Walker and Browne 1999)

• Webware: Computational Technbology for

Network Information Systems (Finkel and

Cruz 1999)

• Internet Application Design: Theory and

Practice (Klassner 2000)

• Client/Server Programming (Stiller and

LeBlanc 2001)

• Client/Server Programming for Internet

Applications (Chung and McLane 2002)

• Web-Based Application Design (Treu 2002)

• Web-Based Development (Yang and Grove

2002)

• Web Programming 1 and 2 (a sequence of two

semester-long courses) (Phillips, Tan, Phillips

and Andre 2003)

• Internet Application Development (Yue and

Ding 2004)

This paper also presents a model curriculum for a

one semester course in Web application

development. The proposed curriculum is based

upon the experiences described in the above papers

and the Computing Curricula 2001 guidelines

(Computing Curricula 2001).

To assess the prevalance of Web-based

development courses, an informal survey of

universities with computer science or engineering

departments was conducted. The computer

science/engineering program course listings for 100

highly respected American and European schools

with computer science/engineering programs were

reviewed for courses that described primarily topics

related to Web or Internet programming. Of those

schools, 25% offered one or more such courses. Of

361

F. Grove R. (2007).

TRENDS IN TEACHING WEB-BASED DEVELOPMENT - A Survey of Pedagogy in Web Development Courses.

In Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies - Society, e-Business and e-Government /

e-Learning, pages 361-365

DOI: 10.5220/0001262103610365

 SciTePress

the remaining 75%, it’s possible that Web

programming is integrated into other courses or that

the course listsings were not complete, so 25%

should be considered a lower limit on the percentage

of schools offering a Web development course.

2 CURRICULUM ISSUES

The courses described in the papers were

undergraduate courses of standard one quarter (10

weeks) or one semester (15 weeks) length, with one

exception, which was a short course offered on

weekends (Walker and Browne 1999). All of the

courses assumed introductory-level programming

experience, though the actual diversity of experience

in classes was often found to be problematic

(discussed in Section 3). Other prerequisites

described in the papers included:

• Software Engineering (2 papers)

• Operating Systems (2 papers)

Not all of the papers described course prerequisites,

however.

Topics covered in the courses tended to

emphasize a core set of development technologies,

including client and server programming languages

(more than one of each in some cases), database

programming, and server configuration. This set

provided background for project development,

which was an essential curriculum component,

though the specific contents of the set varied, e.g.

Java vs. Perl. Beyond this essential programming

knowledge other topics covered in these courses

included network protocols, Web application

architecture, security, encryption, media and

compression, an overview of other (than the core

set) technologies, ethics, and history. None of these

were universal, however.

The choice of which core set of development

tools to use was driven by a number of factors,

including pedagogy, program curriculum (primarily

introductory programming language), laboratory

facilities, budget, and instructor preference. The

most popular set of tools was Apache/Tomcat,

Java/J2EE and MySQL on a Linux host. This choice

was driven primarily by cost and availability, since

all of these components are open-source and can run

on low-end computers. Using open-source software

also eliminated any licensing problems for students

who wanted to build the same environment on

personal computers. The fact that most students

learn C++ or Java as their introductory programming

language was also mentioned as a factor in choosing

Java. CGI/Perl was also used frequently as a server-

side programming language, in addition to Java in

some cases. Windows and the ASP programming

environment were used in one case and were

mentioned as part of an earlier prototype for the

course in two other cases. PHP was used in one case

as the server-side programming language.

The courses used a variety of standard

assessment methods. All of the courses included a

project development assignment in addition to

standard activities and assessment such as

homework and exams. Projects required design and

development of a Web application with active server

components. Most of the projects were team-based

though individual projects were assigned as well, or

exclusively in some courses. Some of the projects

also required installation and configuration of an

operating system and/or Web server. Most projects

were student-conceived though in a few courses

actual Web sites were developed for local clients.

Many of the courses also included a student

presentation assignment requiring students to

research and present information on a particular

Web technology. This assignment has the added

benefit of exposing the entire class to a wide variety

of technologies beyond those in the core set.

Laboratory needs were unusual in that students

required an inordinate level of access to a server in

order to complete class projects. One solution was to

dedicate to the class a lab room with enough

computers to provide two computers (client and

server) to each student team. These systems were

isolated from the Internet in order to forestall

security problems. In other courses each student was

provided with an individual server connected to the

Internet. Another solution was to provide a common

server platform connected to the Internet for the

entire class, with a unique instance of Apache for

each student, bound to a unique port number. Some

authors felt it was important for students to go

through the process of building the entire server,

including installation of the operating system, in

order to appreciate the task of system administration,

while in other courses students installed only

application components.

3 COMMON PROBLEMS AND

CONCERNS

The number and diversity of protocols and

programming languages required for Web

development presented a problem. Students typically

learned several Internet and Web protocols (e.g.,

TCP/IP, HTTP. SSL/TLS) as well as markup

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languages (HTML, XML), a scripting language

(e.g., Javascript, ECMAScript), one or two server

programming languages (e.g., Perl, Java, JSP, C#),

and a database manipulation language (SQL).

Students were also required to learn to configure and

control operating system and server components

(e.g., Linux, Apache, Tomcat, ASP/.Net). Mastery

of all of these is an unreasonable objective but some

practical level of understanding of each is necessary

for completing a Web development project.

Many of the authors reported difficulty in

keeping the course current with respect to the

development tools. Given that the course touches on

a Web client, client scripting language, operating

system, Web server, server programming language,

and database, there are at least six software products

to keep up with. This course is typically taught once

per year, which is the same approximate frequency

for major upgrades to all six products, and so the

instructor must complete a significant research and

revision project every time the course is taught. If

additional tools and languages beyond a core set are

taught the problem becomes more severe. The

problem can be addressed in part by simplifying the

set of topics. For example, Tomcat can serve as both

a Web server and servlet container; the languages

taught can be reduced to Javascript, Java or Perl, and

SQL.

Several authors reported having a problem with

the diversity of student backgrounds with respect to

programming experience and knowledge of Web

technologies. For example, a course might include

lower level students who have completed only

introductory programming courses as well as

experienced upper level students and possibly part-

time students with professional experience.

Teaching HTML, for example, is at the same time

necessary for the lower level students and boring for

the others. One solution is to provide tutorials and/or

labs covering introductory material and require

inexperienced students to learn them independently.

This seems to work well for topics such as HTML or

basic Linux commands, which are not very complex

and not totally foreign. Another practical solution is

to group students into teams such that experience is

complementary and allow students to get help from

team-mates as needed.

Management of the laboratory development

environment took an excessive amount of time for

some instructors, as much as 50 hours for one

instance of the course. This problem is likely

attributable to immaturity of the software

components being used and inexperience with using

the software to support this course. As the software

improves and experience is gained maintenance

should be less of a burden.

Most of the authors reported being unable to find

a suitable textbook for the course. The available

books failed to provide adequate and complete

coverage of the course material individually. In

some cases, more than one book was assigned. This

may be a reflection of the fact that this course is

implemented in very different ways by different

instructors, making it difficult for authors to produce

a generally useful text. It is also likely that textbook

production has required some time to catch up with

curriculum development, and that there are now

more good textbook candidates available than when

these papers were written. For example

Programming the World Wide Web (Sebesta 2005)

and Java Web Development Illuminated (Qian,

Allen, Gan and Brown 2007) are relatively new

books targeting this topic.

4 MODEL CURRICULUM

The primary impetus for increased interest in

teaching Web-based development has been the

continuing growth in economic and social

significance of the Web. The Web has become a

significant medium in commerce, communication,

education, etc., and has spawned entirely new

business and information sharing models, such as

Google and Wikipedia.

This growth has been reflected in Computing

Curriculum 2001, which is a widely accepted

standard model for computer science education that

was developed jointly by the IEEE Computer

Society and ACM. The CC2001 report recognizes

the significance of Web-based systems to the

computing curriculum in Chapter 3, “Changes in the

Computer Science Discipline”.

Today, networking and the web have become the

underpinning for much of our economy. They

have become critical foundations of computer

science, and it is impossible to imagine that

undergraduate programs would not devote

significantly more time to this topic.

Fifteen hours of the CC2001 core curriculum are

related to Net-Centric Computing, including three

hours focused directly on Web-based systems (NC4.

The web as an example of client-server computing).

Web-based systems also appear as an elective topic

within the Net-Centric Computing group (NC5.

Building web applications). In the five years since

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CC2001 was published the significance of the Web

as a development environment has grown, giving

this topic increased significance in the computing

curriculum.

Several common principles are suggested by the

experience of teaching Web-based development.

• Technology is secondary to concepts. Whether

students learn to program server-side

components in CGI/Perl, J2EE, .Net, Ruby,

etc., is relatively unimportant. A student who

thoroughly understands the structure and

operation of an application built with any of

these frameworks can adapt that experience to

the others as needed.

• Practical experience is necessary. Teaching

Web development abstractly is not likely to

produce essential learning. Students must be

actively involved in the development of a

realistic application in order to thoroughly

understand how Web systems function.

• Architecture is fundamental. Learning to use

various programming languages does not

constitute an understanding of Web

applications. Proper architectural design is

essential to successful development of an

application with real scope. Both networking

architectures (client-server models) and

software architecture such as the Model-View-

Controller pattern for server-side systems are

essential to a thorough understanding of Web

systems.

• Security is essential. Web systems do not

operate in a vacuum. An awareness of

common threats for Web applications and

their countermeasures is essential for

developers.

The model curriculum for a Web-Based

Development course suggested here (Table 1) is

derived from the collective experience described

above as well as first-hand experiences of the author

in teaching this course. This curriculum is designed

for a standard semester-long upper-level course in a

computer science curriculum. The only absolute

prerequisite for the course is programming

experience, either in Java or in another Web-

compatible language. Software Engineering,

Database Systems, and Operating Systems are

possible prerequisites, but aren’t essential.

Orthogonal topics such as Software Engineering and

UML are not included but may be integrated across

the listed topics.

This model curriculum focuses on the

development of application functionality (primarily

server-side) and does not include topics related to

user interface design. The basics of programming a

simple but functional user interface (XHTML

Forms, Javascript, Ajax) are included, but

presentation technologies (e.g., CSS, Flash) and the

entire topic of interface design and testing are not.

These topics are extensive and complex enough to

require separate courses, even separate majors! In

fact, the design of interfaces for Web applications is

generally handled by professionals other than those

who develop the server-side software, so this

approach is consistent with industry practice. It is

reasonable, however, to explain to students how to

map the flow of an application interface, using a

UML state chart, for example.

Table 1: Model Curriculum Components.

Topic Weeks

Internet & Web Protocols 1

Web architecture

• 2,3,N-tier client/server

systems

Web server operation and

configuration

• {Apache, IIS, Tomcat}

Client-side Programming

• XHTML Forms, Javascript,

Ajax

Server-side Programming

• {CGI/Perl, J2EE, .NET}

Database access

• {MySQL, JDBC, ODBC}

Web Application Design

• Model-view-controller

pattern

Security & Encryption

• Threat model for Web app’s

• SSL, HTTPS

Efficiency & Reliability 1

Media & Compression 1

Internationalization 1

The topic list presented in Table 1 is meant to be

roughly sequential. The first few weeks are given to

discussion of how the Web works in general,

including its basic protocols (IP, HTTP, XML),

architecture, and operation. The “server operation

and configuration” section should include the

operation of servers in general (request handling,

multithreading, etc.) as well as the configuration of

the specific server that students will use in their

projects. The next six weeks present specific

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programming technologies for client, server, and

data management layers of Web applications. The

specific set of tools to be covered should depend

upon the background of the students, experience of

the instructor, and available laboratory facilities for

students. The specific set that is covered is

unimportant as long as it is consistent and adequate.

The study of Web application design should help

students to place into context the set of development

technologies that they learned previously. The

Model-View-Controller design is especially

appropriate since it is an excellent model for

structuring a Web application. It also provides a

basis for discussion of Web applications from a

software engineering perspective. Alternative

designs or frameworks may be presented as well.

The study of security and encryption should include

a comprehensive threat model that gives students an

understanding of various ways in which a Web

application can be penetrated and the

countermeasures that can be incorporated during

design and development. Basic security tools such as

SSL should also be presented and required in student

projects. The final three topics are highly important

to successful Web applications but may be omitted

from student projects in order to manage their scope.

Students might practice what is learned in these

weeks with lab exercises instead.

5 SUMMARY

Several courses in Web-based development have

been described in papers published over the last

eight years. Instructors have described these courses

as successful and feel encouraged to continue

offering them despite difficulties involved. The

descriptions share several themes, including:

• the difficulty of keeping up with changing

technologies

• the complexity of managing laboratory

facilities

• the difficulty of dealing with diverse

student backgrounds and experience levels

• the lack of an appropriate textbook

Most of these problems will persist as courses in

Web-based development continue to evolve. Though

development technologies will become more stable

and reliable (reducing lab administration headaches),

they will also become more complex as their

capabilities and features are extended. The

availability of textbooks for this course is

improving, however. Several newer books offer

instructors good textbook options.

The courses surveyed here included a variety of

practical experiences for learning and assessment,

the most common of which was a team project

requiring development of a working application.

Leveraging diverse student experience by requiring

them to complete a presentation on leading Web

technologies was another common practice.

Newer architectural developments such as the

Service Oriented Architecture and mobile computing

will challenge instructors to present a complete

picture of Web development in a single semester.

One of the papers surveyed describes a two-semester

sequence for students wishing to study Web

development, which might become the norm as Web

technologies continue to grow in complexity and

diversity.

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Colleges, 18(2), 79-91.

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