One other thing I would recommend for both students and teachers. Learn to think about opportunities in a more commercial way. I think this isn’t really covered a lot, and is a seperate skill.

I believe the problem lies in students. So many students at my college don’t make the extra effort to teach themselves something. I feel that maybe they expect to learn everything they need to know from the instructors. This mindset is terrible and within the next 5 years, these students will likely struggle in the field. It is imperative as students that we spend our free time improving ourselves; however, most students spend their free time on video games or partying. Perhaps it is that I’m slightly older than most of the students (easy now, I’m only in my mid-20s). My free time is spent on one of my constantly evolving side-projects implementing the things that I have been taught and expanding upon them to gain a further understanding beyond what was taught in the classroom.

The problem for my school lies mostly in the students and I wish that I could do something to motivate my classmates to strive for something beyond perfection. Something to help them gain the initiative that they will need in their careers.

Good read.

I am confident in our courses and they are based on my self-taught experience. We teach only what is happening now and what the web standards community would approve of.

It is great to see beginners moving up to advanced course and being on par with the pro’s in such a short time.

Thank you for this article.

I love this industry and I like that it can change quickly, it keeps me on my toes and I agree that we need to have teachers that stay on top of the constant changes and students who participate more.

I ended up doing a few lessons in that class with the teachers permission explaining my final which (instead of being done with iFrames or tabels) was done with CSS and although it was not perfect it was very enjoyable and the teacher still has my site up on the colleges servers.

Of course, it took time to find these resources and and I have set aside chunks of time to read, educate myself, and put my education into practice. But, I think that seeking out the information myself actually makes me an even better web developer in the end because it gives me more hands-on experience.

I didn’t go there myself, I went to a UK Uni (where I felt really behind the times when I graduated and went on to reteach myself) and I wish I’d known about Hyperisland at the time – I would have liked to have gone there instead!

I tried to stick to the curriculum while working round it, so I taught students why NOT to use frames, showed them basic CSS layout instead, and they got the hang of it ok, but one week when I was off sick the replacement teacher taught the students all the outdated stuff I was trying to avoid filling their heads with.

It’s difficult to keep a curriculum up-to-date. And for teachers to keep their knowledge up-to-date, especially when they’re expected to teach web design one week, flower arranging the next. In many fields teachers have been using the same lesson plans for year after year, but that’s not good enough in web design education.

I agree with Bjorn, to a great extent students need to learn themselves and the teacher should point them towards the best, simplest books and resources for learning web standards.

However, after seeing the presentation Mike Kus gave @ FOWD, I don’t really believe that the most important thing is to use the lastest and greatest tricks. Instead, I rather think the most important thing is good design. Most design principles can also be applied to web design, and will never be outdated.

I am not so sure that opting out of education will do you any favours for the following reasons.

Most designers/developers do not start their career as freelancers but through full time employment and I believe that most employers still favour employing a candidate that has been through the educational system over and above one who hasn’t.

One thing is absolutely certain though, if you only have course work to show for your time in further education, you are unlikely to get the job. Unlike other careers (engineering springs to mind), there are no barriers to stop you from practising and perfecting your talents in your spare time. If you aren’t interested in doing so, then frankly you are in the wrong industry.

Personally, I will not consider a candidate unless they have been actively involved in producing work of their own accord and I believe that most employers would also say the same. In other words, you should have the qualification but don’t expect the coursework you did for it to count towards the jobs you apply for.

In simplistic terms, the criteria I believe most employers follow goes something like this;

1. does the individual have an educational background.
2. If so, has the individual produced their own portfolio or are they relying solely on coursework.
3. What is the quality and level of their work and how enthusiastic do they appear to be for working in this industry.

If you can tick all 3 boxes, you are far more likely to get the job. That doesn’t mean that you won’t be considered for the job if you can only match number 3, but if you are up against someone who matches numbers 1, 2 and 3 you probably wont get a chance to argue your corner.