[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I've been following this discussion with great interest.
I've taught HTML, CSS and JavaScript at a TAFE, but not as part of a
coding course, as part of a graphic design course. That's an
interesting environment in which to think about standards -- the
students were totally focused on design and graphics, and were really
learning three applications: Photoshop, FireWorks and DreamWeaver,
rather than what web pages were all about.
I actually think that is a sign of the educational institutions being
slow to catch up in their approach to web design. From what I can tell
it currently seems to be considered either:
* an add-on to a graphic design course, in the form of 'and you can
turn your print/marketing campaign into a web site/online
marketing campaign'.
* as a part of programming and applicatoin development.
Again, anecdotally, either scenario seems to prioritise one aspect of
the process whilst downplaying or ignoring the importance of the other.
It would seem that eventually a crossover course is needed, perhaps in
the form of some type of 'design or development major' . Design students
interested in the web should receive the relevant knowledge to work in
that environment right from the beginning. Equally developers should we
well versed in aspects of usability and interface design, particularly
when learning their client side technologies.
At the moment in Ultimo we have the balance of 9 hours/week multimedia
and design, 9 hours per week scripting, HTML, CSS and XML, and 1 1/2
hours usability and accessibility. It's a fairly good balance but there
is so much to get through in 6 months. Once they leave the Cert IV they
don't cover any aspects of client side web design again - the next year
is all .NET development (no PHP unfortunately ;( )
I have sat in course implementation workshops where interface design has
been dismissed as drawing pretty pictures, and then HTML and CSS has
been downplayed to "learning a few tags - 6 or 8 hours tops" (by the
same person, no less!)
I am not suggesting that we produce a "jack of all trades", but I feel
the education must start out in a much more generalised way.
On a positive note, I have noticed a steady stream of designers
enrolling in the course to learn how to work for web. Most come in with
some Dreamweaver experience and the notion that they will learn advanced
Dreamweaver. For some of them 12 weeks of css and html in notepad is too
much, but most of them embrace the idea of learning theories of
usability, accessibility and end up performing really well.
It would be great, however, if there was a course that started taking
responsibility for the different aspect of web design in a far more
holistic way right from the begiinning.
I agree with points others have made:
1) IT staff have an amazing amount of control over what is allowed --
to the detriment of the students' learning what happens in the real
world. Not one of my students had ever FTPd a file to a server so, for
instance, all their paths had to be relative and they could make
mistakes with case-sensitivity with impunity.
2) Syllabuses are either out of date, or more likely, so general as to
be meaningless -- students on my JavaScript course had to learn "a
scripting language". Students on my HTML course had to learn "a markup
language". I could have taught them Visual Basic and SGML and been
entirely within the guidelines.
3) There's no time -- I taught a class of fifteen graphic designers
the very basics of HTML in a class lasting in total, five hours or so.
When they said "how do I get two columns in my page?" I taught them to
do a table. Mea Culpa. I did, of course, explain about table versus
div positioning, font tags versus CSS, but I didn't attempt to teach
them two completely different languages in that very short time. If
they achieved a valid page with an <h1>, a couple of <p>s and a
working link, I was happy. But I can't say I advanced the cause of
standards much...
------------------------------------------------------------
"Have You Validated Your Code?"
John Horner (+612 / 02) 8333 3594
Developer, ABC Kids Online http://www.abc.net.au/
------------------------------------------------------------
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