I agree that Professionals should talk to students and teachers, I also think that businesses and corporations that hire could do the same. Wouldn’t it be interesting if companies like Google, Yahoo!, and many others sent speakers and recruiters to colleges, universities, and other institutions with web programs. It would be great if they spoke about what is needed [skills, practices, and ability to keep up with technology change] for the work force? I also still keep thinking about internship possibilities, where companies could work with and mentor students for on the job work experience. Maybe these internship programs could also give information on what basics are needed?

@ John A. Bilicki III

So sorry to hear about your issues with the failure from not complying with the use of archaic practices in your course. You are not alone, and I think it is unfortunate that students are paying money (and sometimes a lot of money) for poor quality education. You are fortunate that you know what you do, on the other hand I can imagine how frustrating it was for you to experience. If the program is a good one, they would look at what you know and want to know more, then adapt or change the materials.

@Jeremy Osborn

Your program is lucky to have a director like yourself. Thanks for the link to the Simple Bits: Education post by Dan Cedarholm. There are a lot of great replies on that post. It is really encouraging to see that positive changes are happening in the education field, and I hope we will see web education continue to improve across many more institutions. My hope is that students will start looking and asking questions — before they enroll — and those schools losing better students may start to look at their programs. Quality competition may start having an effect as more schools offer better programs than others, and this type of information gets out. Thanks for leaving your reply!

I haven’t read the criteria for the course but they have to build there own ePortfolio. From what I got when I was talking to students about it, they have to use things like frames, flash and PDF’s in there work in some way.

Now I couldnt quite beleive this. These kids that did this and walked away passing the course are going to go into a job thinking that flash is cool for navigation buttons, frames are great and PDF’s is the best way to deliver content.

There didnt seem to be any education involved to what was the best method, no upside or downside to each of them. It was just saying you need to use these so use them.

This is what kids where expected to create, this is aparently a passing grade. There doesnt even appear to be a basic tutorial of telling students about title pages.

More examples of passing peices of work here and here.

I know these are only 15-16 year old students but is this correct way to educate students who may want to enter the world of web/multimedia development?

This through no fault of the student and well done to them on passing their course, I just cant help but feel a little worried that they are thinking building websites like this is the best and way they should do it all the time.

I wonder how long it will on like this?

My philosophy is to prepare students for the future of web design by giving them the training they need to be creative but also economically productive designers. It is simply a matter of time before the concepts of css/xhtml layout become mainstream and I want my graduates to be the innovators of the future, not maintainers of the past.

As far as “resistance” from universities and other educational institutions, this is a natural human phenomenon. All those web designers and instructors who were trained or self-taught in table layout are hesitant to change because it means their systems of working, their templates, their tested “hacks” all need to be thrown away (or at least modified). All those things represent a body of information and work that required blood, sweat and tears. Yet the arguments for throwing those investments away aren’t compelling to many people.

I could go on forever on this subject obviously :)

You can see our curricullum at CDIA here. Also, Dan Cederholm from Simplebits recently stopped by and had some nice things to say about the program, you can see that post here.

Apparently those of us who code with standards in mind do not know how to create web sites.

The program is less instructional and more focused on things like learning how to learn and learning concepts and the explanation of concepts, instead of just saying “this is how you do a certain thing.”

What a great direction! I guess the web isn’t just black and white, but ever-evolving shades of grey.

I’m just a bit lost in this post.

I know what you mean. Content delivery, grammar and spelling are just as important as semantic markup for clear and effective communication.