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CITS5505 Agile Web Development Course Evaluation: A bit outdated but good for entry-level student

Marks

  • Individual Project: 10%
  • Group Project: 40%
  • Final Exam: 50%

Course Content

This course covers HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Bootstrap, and Flask, serving as an introduction to web development. If you don’t have a background in the subject and don’t put in extra effort to learn, you’re naturally out of luck. The lab content is basically just following tutorials from W3Schools. This creates a divide: those transitioning into coding find it difficult, while those with a formal background find it outdated. Compared to component-based development frameworks, Bootstrap and jQuery are like an older but very capable worker. The Flask framework isn’t outdated, making it suitable for an introductory course.

Projects

  • Individual Project: creating a simple static web page introducing the history of hyperlinks.
  • Group Project: Developing a forum-type application, using only the mentioned technologies (forget about Tailwind). The group project vividly highlights the divide mentioned earlier. Some team members try hard but the results are unsatisfactory. One of my teammates hadn’t even set up the Python environment a week before the assignment was due; they used non-semantic file names with spaces (like Pic 1.jpg), and couldn’t use the backend data without me providing a demo. By the end, I was so overwhelmed that I had to personally restructure everything just before the deadline. In contrast, I know people who transitioned into coding and quickly got the hang of it (though they put in a lot of effort).

Advice

Those transitioning into coding need to practice their problem-finding and problem-solving skills; otherwise, it’s really tough…

Exam

The exam is baffling. It’s closed book, the questions have no relation to past papers, the focus areas are odd, with almost no questions on Flask. Instead, there were questions on Git. Good thing I didn’t study, because even if I had, it wouldn’t have helped. It’s not that getting an HD is impossible, but going in without studying is more efficient [doge].

Course Improvement Suggestion

I think the course should be split into two (for example, Introduction and Advanced). The introductory course should focus on HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and front-end frameworks (like React), using Mock.js for API responses or just creating static pages. The advanced course should systematically cover backend frameworks like .Net, Spring, or NestJS, progressing towards full-stack development. However, for a two-year master’s program, such an arrangement seems too luxurious.

Job Market Analysis

Analyzing job data from Seek (using a previously scraped dataset) reveals that almost only senior positions involve Flask. In contrast, there are many junior positions for .Net/C#. If you think taking this course will prepare you for job hunting, think again.

Conclusion

UWA IT courses are like this; the university just needs to meet its teaching KPIs, while students have much more to consider.