NEWM-N 413 Advanced Web Application Development is a course offered by the IUPUI School of Informatics and Computing's Human-Centered Computing Department. N413 is part of the Media Arts and Science (MAS) Program, and is cross-listed a few different ways. It is listed as a spcial topics course, and is listed as a 585 course for Graduate Students. It is designed to get students developing AMP-platform full-stack web applications through exercises, project design, and development of a web application of the student's design.

Students begin the course with exercises like the JAMS seen in this workshop. These exercises develop the database, PHP, and Javascript skills needed to think about how full-stack projects are designed. Then students propose a project concept, create a prototype design, and develop a project plan. Once the plan is established, the student builds a fully functional web application.

Along the way, many technical topics are discussed, such as design patterns (Model-View-Controller), the use of frameworks (CodeIgniter, Bootstrap, etc.), and the issues encountered by students while developing their project.

Direct student participation is an important feature of the course, with regular feedback/troubleshooting sessions, student-led presentations on technical topics (such as Javascript libraries and plug-ins), and student-to-student user testing sessions to provide feedback about the projects under development.

Course Outcomes. The course has several learning outcomes. The most apparent outcome is the completed web application. However, a less obvious, but very significant outcome is the experience gained with engineering a complex, multi-level system. The project requires integration of several technologies, and the conceptual skill to understand how to make all the parts work together. Cutting across this process is communication. Proposals, prototypes, and project plans are all ways to communicate the project idea to others. An individual with these skills is a valuable member of any digital media enterprise.