Temasek Polytechnic, Singapore (http://www.tp.edu.sg/)
Challenge
To develop students’ skills in creating creative, industry standard websites and E-business projects.
Benefits
- The students acquired web design and development skills, which will enhance employability in the job market.
- Macromedia MX 2004 enabled students to develop industry-standard corporate website within six weeks.
Project Details
Temasek Polytechnic's mission is to prepare its graduates and working adults for future dynamic change with relevant knowledge, and lifelong skills. Its firm belief is that innovation nurtured at school will perpetuate a thirst for continuous improvement in its school leavers throughout their working life.
One of its initiative is to equip its students with sound technical skills that are current and future to the global economy.
In congruent to this, Temasek Polytechnic introduced the Diploma in Info-Communications course under its Engineering School in 2000. The Diploma was created to train a workforce to answer to Singapore's transformation into a dynamic and vibrant information and communications technologies centre with a thriving Net economy.
The Diploma is not just about Information Technology (IT) alone. It is designed to enable students to harness the technologies in the integration of IT and telecommunications to meet the growing demands of the infocomm industry. It aims prepare for careers not just in IT, but also in telecommunications and infocomm as well.
The course's distinction is its dedication to keeping its training facilities up-to-date, and garnering support from key industry players for its teaching materials.
To make learning more challenging and practice-oriented, the course incorporates opportunities for students to complete mini-projects and, in some instances, liaise with companies to complete their assignments.
Most recently, Macromedia MX 2004 was integrated into the curriculum to help students acquire web design and development skills.
"Macromedia technology is behind some of the most interactive and engaging websites in the world. We selected MX 2004 to teach the students web development skills, based on the most used platform known," said Mr Leong Kit Hoong, Course Manager of diploma in Info-Communications. "The skills that students garner will be effectively close to real life work situation and with skills that are usable in their chosen profession."
Students were introduced to Dreamweaver MX 2004, Flash MX 2004 and Fireworks MX 2004. And as first-time users, students found the enhanced interface surprisingly user-friendly. MX 2004 allows them to learn the necessary web development and design skills within 14 weeks.
The ease of integration and the shorter learning curve also meant that the students can unleash their creativity, and demonstrates hands-on to them that media-rich and interactive websites need not be difficult or complicated to create.
Students could develop web pages with Dreamweaver MX 2004, edit and import all major graphics formats with Fireworks MX 2004 and designed animation movies and interactive buttons with Flash MX 2004. Students have successfully created industry-standard websites within six weeks.
"The usability of MX 2004 shortens the student's learning curve and allows them to focus on the fundamentals of content effectiveness, interactivity and usability," said Mr Leong. "We are confident that the students will find it easy to relate to work environment situations as they would already be technically well-trained in the most globally common web platform."