This semester, students from different cohorts and majors came together to turn an internal challenge into a real, usable product. The QUEST elective BMGT408C: Quality Web Development in Business was offered for the first time in two years this fall, challenging four student teams with creating an archive for QUEST capstone projects. 

Associate Director Jessica Roffe, who leads corporate relations and finds scopes for the capstone projects, served as the client for this project, seeking an alternative to the Google Drive folder QUEST is currently using, which lacks organization or filtering. She hoped students would “work on developing a website that would benefit students finding past project examples to help inform their future work and potentially be public facing for corporate partners to be able to filter by themselves.” 

To mirror real-world development environments, Dr. John Bono, the professor for 408C, restructured the course and project. Recognizing the growing role of AI across industries, Professor Bono made the decision to integrate AI into the course to demonstrate how it can be used in modern web development. He also emphasized the importance of students taking initiative to learn on their own. Sebastian Cantarilho, Cohort 46, credits this initiative for his team’s success. “Doing our own research was one of the things that got us to our end goal; I couldn’t have done it by myself or I couldn’t have done it with just learning in class.” Thus, students developed not only technical skills like coding, but also adaptability and curiosity to learn new skills.

Another aspect of 408C that sets it apart from other web development classes is the way it takes advantage of interdisciplinary teams. Many students who took this class were not Computer Science majors, yet found their skills were utilized extensively. Cantarilho, a Marketing major, contributed through design and user-centered thinking, while developing skills in coding, presentations, and in marketing web applications. “This project was a really good example of applying marketing to anything. It really allowed me to build on the skills I had and also learn new things.” Shivani Sogal, a Biology major in Cohort 46, similarly emphasized the value of collaboration. “Working with people from different majors, different backgrounds, and combining everyone’s strengths is something that you’re going to continue doing no matter what area you go into.”

This diversity led to each group taking a distinct creative approach. Roffe noted “some teams had a homepage that looks like the QUEST website and explains what the capstone projects are. Other teams didn’t do that and went right into the filtering system.” Bono found it “rewarding seeing some of the best designs coming from students who have never coded before. Seeing their eye for design, coming up with a great UI, even if they didn’t fully understand the code, was amazing.” 

For these QUEST students, BMGT408C was not only a web development class. It was a way to learn to perform research, build their skills, apply their own unique skillsets, and build off of others’ strengths to create a unique solution. Congrats to the 408C students on developing fantastic products!