BIO 200: Life Science
The study of life processes ecological factors and the plant and animal kingdoms; biological systems and their control; Human anatomy and physiology; Human Diseases, genetics, inheritance and evolution; the cell as the basic unit of life.
BSM 150: Business Start-up Strategies
Students in this course are exposed to basic issues in starting a business. Topics may include capitalization, staffing, subcontracting, permits, facilities, and basic business planning. The course offers students practical exercises to begin strategic development of a business and offers practical problems and issues in the startup phase of building a successful organization.
BSM 220: Principles of Marketing
In this course, students study the nuances of promotion, advertising, and consumer spending, and how those concepts can be applied to getting the word out about a company, product or service. Students learn about planning effective advertising campaigns by analyzing public demand for a particular product or service, and the products offered by the competition. Students also learn about the different methods of marketing, and how technology has impacted the way marketing is handled for both big and small companies.
BSM 255: Project Management
This course prepares students to develop and implement project plans when working to complete assigned projects. Topics in this course may include defining project goals and objectives, specifying tasks or how goals will be achieved, establishing needed resources for project completion, and associating budgets and completion timelines. Students study the major phases of project management including project feasibility, planning, implementation, evaluation, and support. Project management software will be used by students to gain an understanding of how to best organize and delegate their project. Students gain an understanding of how to manage projects and how these skills may be applied to an individual project or a group project.
CSC 100: Student Success Fundamentals
This course serves as an introduction to the necessary core skills needed to be successful at an academic, professional, and personal level. Students will identify core skills, values, and interests to assist in their path to success. Topics covered in this course may include time management, effective study skills, written and oral communication, improving critical thinking to enhance problem-solving skills. Other topics may include job search techniques and job etiquette, and on-the-job behavior. Students will work towards building their professional development through various assignments and topics throughout the course. Students will explore Laurus College resources for success inside and outside the classroom.
ENG 100: English Composition I
English provides students with the basic rhetorical foundations to prepare them for the demands of academic and professional writing. Students in this course will learn and practice the strategies and processes that successful writers employ when communicating information. These strategies include reading analytically and strategically, improving reading comprehension, writing persuasively, writing for investigative purposes, problem-resolution, evaluation, explanation, and refutation.
ENG 200: English Composition II
English provides students with the basic research foundations and skills to prepare them for the demands of academic and professional writing. Students in this course will learn and practice the strategies and processes that successful writers employ when researching topics and information to prepare reports and arguments. The course will culminate with a written research paper and the presentation of the student’s research for peer response.
ENG 305: Speech and Rhetoric
This course builds on the foundation of ENG100 (English Composition I) and ENG 200 (English Composition II) by introducing students to effective rhetorical concepts—both classical and modern—and to apply relevant analysis. Understanding classical rhetorical devices—logos, pathos, and ethos—and how writer’s effectively use them to sway opinion provides students with a methodology of being able to appropriately judge the information they encounter in both the academic and professional arena. Additionally, this course will help students hone their skills in argumentation and presentation.
HUM 120: Introduction to Sociology
This course introduces tools used by sociologists to explore and understand society. Social relationships, social structures and processes are explored.
HUM 140: Introduction to Psychology
Psychology is the science of behavior and mental processes. In this class, students will dive into what makes themselves and others behave the way they do. Topics covered in this class include Neuroscience, Sensation and Perception, Learning, Memory, Thinking and Intelligence, Developmental Psychology, Personality Theories and Assessment, Social Psychology, Abnormal Psychology, and Workplace Psychology. This class will be focused more on behavior as it pertains to the workplace rather than the clinical side of Psychology.
HUM 200: World History
Students will explore common challenges and experiences that unite the human past and identify key global patterns over time. This overview of world history covers political, economic, social, religious, intellectual, cultural, and military history in a chronological story that will help students gain an appreciation and understanding of the distinctive character and development of individual cultures in society.
ITS 100: Hardware Technology Fundamentals
Students begin learning about computer hardware and each item that makes up a computer. Students build the skills needed for proper file management, and learn to troubleshoot basic problems that may occur during computer usage. Students study the system board in depth, learning about components, as well as, their functions. Other topics covered may include computer memory, different operating systems, floppy drives, and hard drives. Students also work with computer power supplies, learning how to measure output and proper removal and replacement of power supply units. Students learn to handle several system types and troubleshoot various computer hardware issues.
ITS 150: Basic Networking
Starting with an introduction to networks students gain an understanding about communication services, mail services, and management services. Students study networking standards and models, and study the various layers making up networking as a whole. Students gain an understanding of different network protocols, and their functions. Students explore networking media and learn to install protocols on various operating systems. They examine the difference between LANs and WANs, and the transport systems that serve them both. Other topics covered may include installing NICs in computers and configuring them for various types of networks. Network hardware such as hubs, repeaters, bridges, and routers may also be examined in this course.
MTH 101: Introductory Algebra
This course provides students with a conceptual understanding of algebra by using problem solving applications in context to real-world application. Students will integrate meaningful applications with relevant data, graphs, tables, charts, colors, and diagrams.
MTH 240: Statistics
This course covers descriptive statistics and inferential statistics with relevant applications to solving real-world problems, hypothesis testing and decision-making. Important statistical models and distributions will be discussed.
PHY 200: Physical Science
This course introduces students to physical science. Students will learn about physics, chemistry, astronomy, meteorology, and geology. This will give students the ability to understand and interact with their physical environment in a more engaging way. Some of the knowledge students gain includes Newton’s Laws, chemical elements, the universe, and geologic concepts. masking, filters, image manipulation and correction, composition, painting, and optimization for the web. Students examine techniques for efficient editing, processing, and file handling. Topics in photo editing may be studied, including color enhancement, lighting correction, and overall retouching.
PRO 200: Professional Communications in the Workplace
This course focuses on professional communication in the 21st workplace. Students in this course will hone their communication skills by working on various assignments and projects, including: face-to-face conversations, collaborative work groups, presentations, and interviews. Lectures include topics in nonverbal communication, cultural differences, organizational fit, and networking within specific industries through face-to-face interactions and via social networking sites, such as Facebook and LinkedIn. By the end of the course, students will have prepared industry specific portfolios and taken part in mock interviews specific to their field of study.
WDD 101: Internet Fundamentals
This course introduces students to the World Wide Web. Students examine the history of the web and how its development has shaped the ways people do business and advertise. Students gain an understanding for the complexity of the web and how servers, users, and databases all work, search, access information, and download simultaneously. Topics in this course may include the basics of HTTP, FTP, HTML language and tags, coding styles, links, image placement, and image maps. Students learn the importance of web page appearance and navigation. Students are introduced to the basics of initial web page planning and production, and learn key terminology applied to web page creation and implementation.
WDD 110: Digital Graphics
This course introduces students to Adobe Photoshop, the fundamental graphics application and image editing software used in the computer graphics industry. Students learn the fundamentals of this software, and will study topics including selections, layers, masking, filters, image manipulation and correction, composition, painting, and optimization for the web. Students examine techniques for efficient editing, processing, and file handling. Topics in photo editing may be studied, including color enhancement, lighting correction, and overall retouching.
WDD 130: Website Fundamentals
In this course, students will learn how to reproduce common web design layout patterns to quickly create websites that are easy to understand and navigate. Students learn to create more complex multi column designs to make their pages easier to read and understand. Students learn the basics of wireframing and planning as they take first steps towards building custom layouts utilizing design patterns. Students review the anatomy of web pages and examine common workflows as well as build confidence via critiquing both their peers and ready-made examples.
WDD 150: Creative Design
Vector graphics are ideal for simple or composite drawings that need to be device-independent, or do not need to achieve photo-realism. In this course, students learn how to use a computer software program to create and edit vector-based graphic images for use within a web page. Applying the principles of graphics design, students will create and edit images for use within a web page. Other topics may include drawing and various artistic techniques to produce visual graphics effective for the web.
WDD 160: Graphic Design Basics
This course introduces students to the basics of design theory as it relates to web design. Students gain an understanding of the effective use of design elements such as points, lines, colors, shapes, & space to create examples that emulate current web design trends. Students are introduced to building common layouts using design elements to create intentional visual hierarchies using visual weight and basic design principles. Students work with wireframes to create custom prototypes of web pages and other design solutions and learn to incorporate peer critiques into their designs. Additional topics include art history, typography, color theory, and designing for different audiences.
WDD 170: Web Page Authoring
In this course, students gain an understanding of the basics of responsive design techniques. Students work towards creating responsive web pages using current techniques. In addition, students are introduced to common CSS frameworks to improve the speed and accuracy of building web solutions. Students work building pages utilizing common design patterns and elements through frameworks. Topics include media queries, percentage-based widths, image DPI, and modifying previously learned patterns to be responsive to different screen sizes.
WDD 210: Digital Solutions
In this course, students gain an understanding of the PHP scripting language. This server-side language is especially suited for web development and can be embedded into HTML documents. Students in this course will learn how to write programs to store and retrieve data, build arrays, work with control structures, and build contact forms. Students are introduced to sessions and cookies, custom functions, uploading files, and working with common programming elements.
WDD 230: Web Framework Fundamentals
In this course, students will learn the basics of installing and managing popular Content Management Systems (CMS). This class will explore the creation and implementation of custom themes as well as the process of managing accounts, comments, pages, posts and other common CMS tools. Students will also study techniques to craft and display blog posts and other content. Topics include writing and installing plugins using popular scripting languages such as PHP, creating custom templates, and modifying the user interface.
WDD 240: Digital Business Development
In this course students learn to create an online ecommerce solution using popular Content Management Systems (CMS). Students work with ecommerce plugins to transform their projects into websites designed for electronic sales including a means to collect orders, store customer information, work with payment gateways, and protect data. Students will learn to customize their sites for different types of businesses and products and add other common ecommerce elements. In addition, students are introduced to analytics and metrics for CMS sites as well as improving search engine optimization through plugins and other methods.
WDD 250: Client-Side Scripting Fundamentals
In this course students learn the basics of the JavaScript scripting language. Students are introduced programming elements such as variables, arrays, control structures, functions, and objects. Students gain an understanding of the Document Object Model and learn ways to manipulate HTML and CSS using current best practices. Students create simple common scripts and study how JavaScript can be incorporated into modern web designs. Other topics include DOM selection and events listeners, timers and dates, plus how to plan scripts and work with errors and bugs.
WDD 260: Advanced Client-Side Scripting
In this course students will advance upon their foundations of web scripting techniques for the development & maintenance and scaling of JavaScript plugins for modern websites. Topics include popular design patterns for the structuring and organization of JavaScript plugins with the use of popular code libraries such as jQuery in addition to the theory and creation of single page applications using popular JavaScript frameworks & AJAX and JSON data files.
WDD 270: Digital Publishing
This course introduces strategies for creating simple interactive mobile applications. Students will gain an understanding of the basic theory behind creating effective mobile applications as well as techniques for creating custom apps based on common design patterns and interfaces. Topics in this course may include native mobile applications created via Adobe AIR via Adobe Animate CC and hybrid apps created via HTML/CSS & JavaScript.
WDD 280: Motion Graphics for Web Design
This course introduces students to the basic principles of creating motion graphics for online projects. Students will learn to create engaging HTML5 and CSS3 based animation and interactive experiences for use on the web. This course teaches advanced techniques to create responsive animations for a variety of devices and platforms. Topics will include audio and video via native HTML code features, managing animation physics, and utilizing current scripting technology to generate the code with ease.
WDD 310: Digital Advertising
This course teaches common traditional and modern marketing theories. It focuses on consumer behavior, sales management, and basic marketing principles and research. This course also examines marketing strategies for specific audiences. In addition, this course focuses on email marketing, growing an email list, and the in and out of managing email mailers. It also focuses on creation and management of pay per click ads and other types of online advertising as well as the creation, execution, and maintenance of an online ad campaign.
WDD 320: Usability Design
This course explores designing digital solutions specifically for ease of use. Topics include mobile development, designing for efficiency, audience testing, and experience design.
WDD 330: Desktop Publishing
This course explores using desktop publishing tools to create both digital and print based solutions to client needs. Possible topics include newsletter, brochure, magazine, and pamphlet layouts; working with printing presses; 3d printing; and other publishing topics.
WDD 340: Content Creation
This course outlines the skills necessary for writing on the web. It explores both short and long form writing with an emphasis on tone, grammar, and writing for specific audiences.
WDD 410: Community Management
This course explores popular digital marketing channels. Topics include social media use, trends, audience, and advertising. It also teaches audience communication and mood/tone management, dealing with angry customers, creating and continuing online conversations, and other forms of community management. This class also focuses on determining audiences for specific channels.
WDD 420: Brand Management
This course focuses specifically on creating layouts for different online channels. How to create items for Facebook vs Twitter and how to set up websites specifically for sharing. It also goes over creating landing pages and managing brands across different channels.
WDD 430: Digital Strategies
This course introduces students to analytics and its role in digital marketing. Students will learn how to gather and interpret customer metrics and use them to plan and develop online advertising campaigns through popular web platforms such as Google AdSense. The course will teach students how to set client budgets and achieve individual client goals by interpreting and applying data trends. Students will also learn how to integrate tracking pixels, plugins, and other metric gathering tools into their web solutions.
WDD 440: Project Development
This course assists students in creating portfolios, developing resumes, and improving interview skills. It explores different career options for digital marketers including freelance web design.
