When students sign up for Christin Matthews’ web design class, it’s typically unlike any they’ve enrolled in before.

Matthews treats the class like a small business, and recently, her St. Aloysius High School students designed a website now being used by a Nashville, Tenn. interior designer.

The designer, Valerie Maloney, already had a few connections to the school prior to the project: She is Matthews’ cousin, and her mother, Chris Lauderdale Maloney, graduated from the school.

“So far our Web Design class has had three ‘clients,’ and as in real life, each client case is different. In this particular case, our client had already purchased a domain name, so students used the webpage builder available with that particular service,” Matthews said.

The five students communicated directly with the business owner by phone and email to gather information, including photos, for the site.

“I think it’s satisfying for the students to feel like they’ve really made a difference for someone,” Matthews said. “They were able to design a website for a real business.”

The students evaluated other interior design websites, discussed navigation, photo editing and social media and linked the site to the business’s Facebook and Instagram accounts.

“I hope the students are as excited as I am about this project,” Matthews said. “Whether they realize it or not, this project-based learning experience has allowed them to utilize their computer programming and business skills. The students have spent hours coding with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript programming languages and are able to tie it all together with the creation of a real website.”

Matthews said her students have realized how important it is to try to accurately meet the needs and wants of different clients.

“Precision is key when it comes to making a website,” St. Aloysius Senior Emanuel Islam said.

Islam was part of the five-student team that created the website, along with fellow seniors Imani Adams, Prafulla Thakur and Tyler Williams and freshman Ethan Naron.

“It makes you feel like a professional,” Adams said. “As a team, we accomplished so much, and it made us feel like a small business working together on the website.”

In addition to building a website, the class designed a standard-sized postcard for Valerie M Design to send to potential customers, using the same design elements as used in the website for consistency.

Visit the website the students built at valeriemdesign.com.

St. Aloysius is currently in Phase I of its one-to-one Digital Learning Initiative, a program that will provide MacBooks to its junior high and high school students.