Part 2: Web design in schools
08 Jun 2005The last post on this subject generated a bit of interest, so I thought I’d share some more thoughts on the same. 
Who are you calling attention-seeker? Seriously, though – this time, I’m aiming to share some more constructive thoughts on how to improve the situation.
First up, a response to some of the comments. I think that there’s a very definite need for the teaching of web design in any general IT course in schools or other institutions. Considering they’ve been teaching progamming in these since the beginning of time, a little markup is hardly too much to ask.
You don’t learn web design in year nine, the burden isn’t on a year nine computing syllabus/teacher to teach web design to any great level of competency…
Clearly, they believe you do. “Any great level of competency”, here, is apparently none at all. Existing courses do not render students proficient in web design, but rather in use of a word processor to create unprintable documents. I would suggest that if they elect to teach anything resembling web design, the first aspect of the course should be to examine a basic document structure – first a document type declaration (DTD), then document meta data (header information, links to archives, stylesheets, alternate document formats, etc.), then content using semantic markup.
Only after this should design be explored, in terms of using CSS to adjust positioning, typography, and graphical elements of design.
All institutions seem to teach the WYSIWYG model – but I have stopped griping over it – mainly because I know that most people in these “intro†classes won’t make it very far in Web design – and if they do – they will eventually learn the right way to do things.
I’d argue against this passivity. I note the point, but would suggest that the reason given ignores web design training as an ancillary thing — that is, people do these courses not as graphic designers looking to shift or expand their focus, or people looking to move into web design as a career, but rather as a part of their regular employment. An example has already been given by Steve in his article and comments – his friend wasn’t being educated in order to advise others in web design, but rather as an ancillary part of her job, much like preparing printed handouts. Similarly, many other professions also require a degree of web literacy.
Having said that, I’d agree that adding your own “two cents” to these courses is counter-productive: at least, perhaps, the attendees will achieve a smattering of design knowledge. More to the point, these courses should be changed at an education level, not as a student or attendee!
I’d also don’t think that print experience is irrelevant or unhelpful – quite the opposite. The CSS Zen Garden project attests to this, in that it is primarily about design. Print and web design are not mutually exclusive, and, in many cases, are complementary. There’s also nothing inherently wrong with learning to use Photoshop (or similar utility) to splice images for web production – this is a valid technique for creating graphical layouts with CSS, too – although I personally don’t use this method, others do, and, provided they’re not using tables for their display and are including meaningful alternative textual descriptions (alt text) where applicable, there’s absolutely nothing to be said against this.
Regrettably, an understanding of graphic design for a print medium often instills a false confidence in authors – it is the role of educators to ensure that the differences between web and print design are made clear where they are responsible for the dissemination of design practice knowledge, and there is much that may still be done in this area.