In the Spring of 2022, I took Digital Skills (WR 466/566) at Portland State. Geared towards students in the publishing master’s program and interested undergraduates, this course covered technical concepts through a literary lense.
Skills developed:
- HTML, CSS, and WordPress
- UX design, usability testing, and following accessibility guidelines
- Writing copy for the web
- Altering WordPress themes to create custom child themes
- Designing graphics for the web and social media
- Basic web security principles
Midterm Assignment: Digital Poem Page
Before getting started with WordPress themes, we learned to build web pages from scratch using HTML and CSS. Our midterm assignment was to create a page for a digital web poem using skills we’d learned in class and on our own. We then tweaked our web pages to work on mobile devices, and created social media graphics to coincide with the web pages.
Final Project: Portfolio
After learning how to customize WordPress sites using child themes, our final assignment was to create professional online portfolios designed to aid us in our future careers. We learned how to market ourselves to potential employers by highlighting our individual skills, talents, and previous work. I chose to maintain my portfolio and continue my learning after the term ended, and several “drafts” led to this current site.