Demonstrating your skills in the career world often goes beyond what you learned in the classroom. “I always tell my students that if they want to be developers, they should improve on their skills by taking on projects where they’re helping out,” Will Leurs, an instructor of creative media and digital culture said.
Leurs is a professor and mentor to Joshua Yoes, a senior DTC major. With the help of his education, Yoes created a web app to make viewing events on campus more accessible. The web app, WSU Vancouver Events, was deployed on Sept. 1.
According to the web app’s description on Yoes’ online portfolio, he “created this project as a way to highlight how many things are going on each week at WSU Vancouver and help increase the visibility of clubs and other events on campus.”
(Sydnie Kobza/The VanCougar)
The description also stated this is a redesign of the WSU Vancouver Rich Site Summary feed. According to Yoes, RSS is a format for applications to share data between each other easily.
Yoes was inspired to create this web app after working as the marketing intern for the Office of Student Involvement last year. “When I worked as the marketing intern, one of the things I found that was consistently challenging for clubs was just advertising that they’re meeting,” he said.
Yoes has received comments about the web app by students across campus and has been contacted by the Associated Students of WSU Vancouver.
“I was contacted by ASWSUV to redo their website because currently their website is on the old platform of CougSync and the new [platform] does not have a website feature built into it,” Yoes said. He said he would be working to embed a feed for the ASWSUV specific events from CougSync to their website soon.
“Another purpose this app serves is, when you graduate as a DTC major, they really encourage you to have a portfolio to show your breadth of work and whatever your skill is. For me, it’s web development.”
– Joshua Yoes
Yoes launched WSU Vancouver Events through his online portfolio: a conglomeration of his work and experience as a creator within and outside the DTC program.
“Another purpose this app serves is, when you graduate as a DTC major, they really encourage you to have a portfolio to show your breadth of work and whatever your skill is,” Yoes said. “For me, it’s web development.”
When it came to boosting his portfolio and resume, Leurs encouraged Yoes to seek out a project outside of class. Leurs said that as an instructor, he feels a sense of accomplishment when he sees his students successfully launching projects on their own, based on classes they have taken.
For more information, view the web app here: https://joshuayoes.github.io/wsu-vancouver-events/.