The undersigned

Back to school

09/08-2006 | 14:56
54 comments

As some of you know, I am a full time employee in a small graphic design agency in Aarhus, Denmark. This job is a part of my education as graphic designer - the closest term in english might be “internship”.

During the education I have to go to school 3 times for 5 weeks - I have just entered one of these school periods, and I just have to say, that this is pure waste of time!

The whole first week we have “WEB” on the calendar - the school have recently moved from Golive to Dreamweaver - I don’t say that these WYSIWYG applications are all bad, but they sure have to be handled right to get a decent result.

I am all for web standards, maybe I weigh it too high, but I honestly think that we have to keep the standards in mind when we work with web development. “Web standards” is a unknown term on the school, where we recently were told to change the DTD to HTML 4.01 transitional - not just “because”, but because it’s a bit loose and there isn’t the same needs to end open tags etc.

Today we were told that tables is a “gift from heaven” and were clearly explained how to assign design attributes to stuff in the html file - a quick explanation of how “you could” do things in CSS, but also a clear “just stick with doing stuff in the HTML file itself”.

This is resulting in that the 20 people I’m on school with right now, think that they are developing websites the way it should be done, but the truth is that they don’t really have a clue. This means that 500 people finishing their education as graphic designer every year puts “web design” and “HTML” on their resumé, while they might only be able to drag/drop elements in Dreamweaver, Frontpage or Golive.

These problems are not only in the web-part, but is just as much a problem in every other part of the education.

I really hope that the danish government will open their eyes - they want Denmark to be in front, offering great educations etc - but we end up having a graphic design market that relies on self-taught designers and a lot of design agencies with lack of competencies and competent employees.

Oh well, just have to hang in …

54 comments

Andrew Says:

I hear that!

I think the problem is not just Danish schools but at least UK ones as well.

90% of the teachers don’t really know or understand computers well enough to teach students about them, often the pupils actually help out the teachers.

Dreamweaver can be both a blessing and a demon, I love the syntax highlighting and use it for typing out html in (can’t get enough of autocomplete) and then check for quick preview in the wysiwyg view.

On the other hand many people less versed in how the underlying html works may use it to create their sites by dragging and dropping, and as we all know, that creates so painful code!

Hopefully the next version of dreamweaver will be more standards compliant and the schools will teach from XHTML books in the future.

09/08-2006 | 16:15

Rich Says:

I had the same problem on a college course I did (in the UK). Though they advocated standards and CSS and the like, their idea of standards had me wanting to kill myself.

Luckily, one of my tutors shared my view and we campaigned to get them to update the syllabus. I left soon after and as far as I know, there’s still been no change.

09/08-2006 | 17:10

adam Says:

i definately feel the pain. friends of mine have taken courses and then asked me for help. i’d agree with andrew that the problem is professors who shouldn’t be teaching.

i do like dreamweaver’s site manager. The predictive text (for attributes, and automatically closing tags) is really nice as well. and it’s not that you can’t do standards based design with it, it’s just that it doesn’t encourage you.

09/08-2006 | 17:18

nniiccoollee Says:

It’s not just a European phenomenon! I completed my BA in Web Development last year, and as far as I know, it’s one of the very few web-specific degrees being offered right now. (I started the program in 2000, so it was VERY new at the time)

I now manage a college web site and our computer science faculty are asking to have python available on the web servers. Our art faculty are just getting DW and I’m frankly terrified what they’ll be teaching the students, because I’m pretty dang sure it won’t be CSS layouts and standards.

Ultimately, we’re still dealing with the vast disparity between web designers (graphic-focused), web developers (programming-focused), and self-proclaimed webmasters (FrontPage users). There just isn’t any unifying criteria/qualifications yet, and until there is within the industry, formal education is likely to follow suit.

09/08-2006 | 17:29

CSS3 . info - » Danish webdesign education - Weblog Says:

[…] The undersigned has a post about how he learns webdesign on his school in Denmark, and to be honest, it’s frightening me. Table layouts apparently are the way to go according to his teacher, and designs are made using Dreamweaver. Allthough CSS3 might be a way ahead, if webdesign students in Denmark are taught like that, i hope they read a lot on the side on how things should be done… […]

10/08-2006 | 8:43

Lars Silkjær Says:

Well, you have to know that the education, Thomas is talking about, isn’t a 100 % web education. It’s maybe 30 % web and 70 % print/image/type etc. The meaning is, that the students get a quick view of what web is - they are not meant to be the ones programming the sites, but only designing them.

But I agree that it’s a problem with the teachers not knowing enough. My teacher (approx. 4 years ago) had been to a workshop about GoLive, and that was what he was teaching us. That was bad, because he couldn’t even answer, if anyone had questions. So we (who knew a little more about it than he did) had to take over :/

10/08-2006 | 11:55

The undersigned Says:

The funny thing is that no time is spend on how do design websites (accesibility etc), but only focusing on development (far far away from webstandards).

The education is just as bad when it comes to print/image/type - incompetent teachers etc.

And, I’m taking over as well - not only to help people who get stuck, but also correcting the teacher when he teaches. I can’t help it, I just can’t stand that he actually teaches invalid HTML 4.01 transitional!

10/08-2006 | 11:59

nniiccoollee Says:

My BA in web development had exactly ONE graphics class - 6 weeks that covered PhotoShop and Flash. Granted, this was back in 2002, but NOBODY is going to learn either of those programs in 6 weeks, let alone BOTH of them (unless you’re some super-non-sleeping dedicated-almost-to-the-point-of-obsession-type person). I felt bad for my classmates who had never even seen PhotoShop before!

And, you’re right Lars. The courses for my BA covered almost exclusively programming and databases, with only one class that introduced CSS and DHTML and XML.

In my opinion, the bottom line is that this is a field for people who are willing to invest the time in learning and experimentation on their own, before and after formal education.

11/08-2006 | 13:33

Justin Halsall Says:

Same problem here in the NL, you actually get a bad grade if you don’t use tables… :(

18/08-2006 | 1:23

Jesper Kristensen Says:

Being a teacher, I find your article a bit disturbing.
The lack of knowledge about webstandards is a serious problem, teaching webdesign and production.

I dont know if it is the education I am teaching webdesign at, is the same as You are refeering to, when you use the term “graphic designer”, but the education I deal with is called “Mediegrafiker” in Danish.

Where I am employeed, Aalborg Tecnical College, we do teach standards, we do teach xhtml 1.0 strict, as an introduction to webdesign, simply because it is easy to understand, the rules about structure are simple, and combining xhtml and css in the right way, simply provide unlimited freedom to graphic creativity.

Thats why I had to comment on your article. I simply cant understand or belive, that anyone would teach outdated standards, without explaining the progress in webdevelopment and the use of valid standards.

18/08-2006 | 9:32

The undersigned Says:

Dear Jesper,

It’s the same education we are talking about, and I am studying it at Aarhus Techical College. I have two years left of the education, and when I think back at the beginning, when we were first introduced to webdesign, we were taught table-layout in the WYSIWYG editor part of GoLive. No mentioning of code, DTD, standards, structure or anything like that.

Now, in this schoolperiod, the school has moved from GoLive to Dreamweaver, and we are still being told to use the WYSIWYG part of the application. We have shortly learned how to do things in HTML, and we were strictly told to use the HTML 4.01 DTD.

So if you don’t believe me, you could come and visit the school, and take a look at how things works here. And yes, it is disturbing, and yes, I feel like I have to take over the classes and share my knowledge on this specific field - and I already partly have.

18/08-2006 | 10:33

Anonymous Says:

Here in the UK, as some people said above, its quite bad really, some of the teachers don’t seem to know what they’re doing whilst others just happen to be teaching us the wrong things.

My teacher is actually probably the best in the school but we don’t get taught how to make websites, instead they give us Macromedia Dreamweaver and tell us to use it. Being the only one in my class who had previous experience with it, i was fine but other people struggled and i had to show people how to make tables (CSS was not allowed!).

Not only that but rather then helping us on using Dreamweaver for the best way possible, they instead want to concetrate more on Flash which to me might be “cool” but i see creating web pages much important. If we don’t know how to use Macromedia and Photoshop to create decent webpages, how are we going to use Flash successfully?

18/08-2006 | 10:45

Erik A. Drabløs Says:

I have been looking at a lot of options for an education in design during the last year or so. And when I have looked at the study plans and what the students have produced, I have seen many an ominous thing when considering the quality of the education. So when I suddenly found an education with a study plan using sentences like “webdesign with focus on application of web standards such as CSS”, that sure helped me towards choosing that education. After all, if the web-design teacher still teaches table-based design, and has not even heard about web standards, what can I expect of the teachers who are supposed to teach me for example Illustrator and the likes?

18/08-2006 | 19:24

Jesper Kristensen Says:

I think that this discussion should be regarding the professionality of teachers in webdesign. I am sure, in fact I know..! that my fellow teachers on Aalborg Tecnical College are experts on their own field. And I am sure that teachers on other similar schools in Denmark reaches just about the same level in traditional Graphic Designing and the Software used in that field.

I belive that the issue here is, that webdesigning and programming stil is rather new to this particular education, and that normal web-standards therefore are in less focus than layout and graphic design. After all, we are still Graphic Designers, not programmers.

But give it some time, and I am sure that things will change. In Aalborg we teach standards, xhtml, css and so on and so forth, and surely this will be taken onto consideration nationwide within a very short span of time.

19/08-2006 | 0:10

Bekki Says:

That is.. so sad. I went to a small day camp once when I still a design noob (but not using tables!) and they focused on tables 90%. The other 10% was bright annoying colours. What is the world coming to.. :\

20/08-2006 | 17:24

Ash Haque Says:

I haven’t taken a computer related course in ages, last time was in high school, some powerpoint, some web design, and some java programming.

I got all the projects done in like the first week, skipped the next 2 months of classes and still got a 100 =\

03/09-2006 | 9:27

Rune Says:

This is in part a response to Jesper Kristensen. I think you should be carefull call writing html programming. I do not think you can find a single software engineer (datalog, in danish) who regards html, css, dtd’s etc. as programming. It is fairly easy to learn all of these technologies and most people should be able to learn all of them in a semester or so.

I do agree that the focus for web designers should remain on the design part.

04/09-2006 | 23:46

Jesper Kristensen Says:

To Rune. Yes, my mistake. Html is merely markup-language, not programming at all.

But with that in mind, and with webdesigners focus primarely pointed towards design, it is still fair to state that the common knowledge among teachers in webdesign should at least include W3C standards, DTDs, accesability and so on, just to be able to produce designs that render properly for screen, and is prepared for hardcore programming, if nessercery.

06/09-2006 | 15:05

Jeff Says:

In Argentina the problem is similar. The majority of Web design here is done in Flash and seemingly without any consideration as to whether Flash is or isn’t appropriate for a particular site. Awareness of CSS seems to be very limited.

11/09-2006 | 19:43

Kyle Says:

I am getting a BA in Interactive Media Design, and at my school is the exact opposite. Instead of not caring about standards, they are standards Nazi’s (which is usually a good thing). If our pages didn’t validate XHTML 1.0 Strict, we’d literally fail the assignment. We have Dreamweaver installed at school, but none of my teachers want us to use it. We are currently using BBEdit (Mac) at school, and Homesite+/Notepad++ (Windows). My instructors are also planning to migrate from BBEdit to TextMate on the Mac (my favorite and most customizable text editor I know of).

Now what I don’t like is how my teacher wouldn’t let me use innerHTML in javascript class. I realize it’s not supported by the W3C Document Object Model, but come on! I actually got in an argument with him about it. It’s much more elegant, and more supported than a lot of the W3C compliant stuff.

Also, BEFORE we started building websites and coding them, we had design classes. This included programs such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Fireworks, and sometimes even pencils, paint, and paper. I have also had some video (Final Cut Pro) and audio classes (Logic 7 Pro). The mindset there is before you start thinking in code, you need to get a sense of design. My design skills weren’t the best when I started, but now I am pretty confident. I think this teaching style worked for me well. I think much more visually than I used to.

I guess I am lucky that I am getting a good education. It may be expensive as hell, but atleast I now feel I am getting a lot from it (no offense to you). The drawback (quite a big one) is that it doesn’t have the social aspect of the traditional colleges. Going to parties and getting drunk is fun as hell, but there just weren’t any programs I was interested in. I didn’t want to go to school just to party and get drunk; I wanted to learn something I was interested in too. Many of the traditional colleges here seem to be relatively good in the business/engineering/bio/computer science areas, but don’t have much to offer when it comes to graphic design and the web. It’s quite unfortunate IMO.

If you want to learn standards and don’t mind forking out the cash, you can always move down to Texas where I live :).

27/10-2006 | 7:30

de.maschine » Design Boards and Standardistas Says:

[…] back-to-school - this reminds me of the frustration with my own formal “web education”. There’s a lot of dodgy design schools out there. […]

08/11-2006 | 11:38

mapa warszawy Says:

nice…

20/11-2006 | 21:58

Kai Says:

I’m based in Scotland and left college early, without sitting my exams, as I simply couldn’t stand being taught coding techniques that were ten years out of date. We had one lecturer, Shirley Campbell, who was convinced that every secretary in the UK preferred using word perfect to microsoft word, that you needed a criss-cross pattern on a mouse mat, in order use a laser mouse and that professional web designers designed sites for specific screen sizes, rather than to specific screen resolutions.
This was just three years ago!

19/01-2007 | 17:20

Alison Says:

I couldn’t agree more. I left college with an HND in Multimedia, thinking I was an expert in web design. To be fair, having a qualification got me the interview and helped me land the job, but once I started, the senior designer told me to forget almost everything I had learned and taught me CSS design in the real world.
I can’t understand why the people in charge of our education are always several years behind. They used to have the excuse that they couldn’t afford to invest in new books all the time, but with the majority of students now having to pay for their own books, and the amount of info that is free on the internet; that argument no longer holds water.
I found that tutors simply don’t want to take the time to learn new techniques and new software applications themselves and because of it, qualifications are only a piece of paper that says that you are the sort of person that is willing to learn and put some effort into trying to better yourself. In the case of web development qualifications they certainly don’t qualify you to step into position and hit the ground running, unless the company you join is three years behind as well!

09/02-2007 | 11:50

Christene Says:

I found this interesting study, which may be of interest.
http://www.hope.ac.uk/research/iherd/docs/HEFCE-final-report.pdf
For myself, I left college early, as I couldn’t see any light at the end of the tunnel. I didn’t feel that I was being taught anything I didn’t already know and I found I was completing one month assignments in three days. It’s high time the education authorities started paying teacher’s good money, so they could attract a better quality of person. The old addage seems to be as true today as ever, “Those that can - do. Those that can’t - teach!”

19/02-2007 | 17:03

Schokolade Says:

Thanks for this great article.

01/03-2007 | 10:57

verkaufsagent Says:

Thanks for this document i`m search many days in the world wide web,but now i found this information on your site.

Thanks for help,thats the answer of all my questions i`v had

Thanks again

Timo

19/03-2007 | 14:30

GTI Treffen Says:

education is always the success for the future. not only in denmark and not only in web developement. just think about urself. if you have a company and if you are looking for an employee you will take the one whi has the best education.

25/03-2007 | 15:40

Dan Larkin Says:

u will never stop learning until your are dead, but the education for a graphic designer will bring u also much fun, later in your real job its gonna be harder and harder and u will remember your great time in education. enjoy it ;-)

31/03-2007 | 12:31

termin-verwaltung Says:

school is cool i really enjoyed the time at school. come on lets make party ;-) good luck for your future and best notes!

01/04-2007 | 16:41

google tools Says:

I searched a long time for such an great article. Thank you

09/04-2007 | 11:25

aktualnosci Says:

Such problems not only appear in the Denmark. It is in many countries of European Union surely similarly. Members of European Parliament should maybe strike over the modern European programme of the teaching. This would also level the chances of the youth !!

16/04-2007 | 13:32

Versand Says:

You think that´s only in Denmark? It´s the same in Germany and there seems to be no change.

21/04-2007 | 23:15

Büromöbel Says:

Enjoy your time and have a great of it.

23/04-2007 | 9:31

videoüberwachung Says:

hmm, it think the Problem is that the most clients wants quick and dirty solutions, for that reason WYSIWYG editors are popular, but no body is forcing you to use them. :-)

25/06-2007 | 1:58

Knopf Says:

Thanks for this great article.

08/07-2007 | 11:38

Videoueberwachung Says:

Keep up the Good Work, Great article
Greetz

15/07-2007 | 22:59

ludo Says:

I think this goes back to fundamental attitudes. The question is what to do by default and how to show people the possible other choices.There is never any reason not to explore a better way.

09/08-2007 | 22:05

Artikelverzeichnis Says:

Thanks for very interesting article. btw. I really enjoyed reading all of your posts. It’s interesting to read ideas, and observations from someone else’s point of view… makes you think more. So please keep up the great work. Greetings.

31/08-2007 | 12:40

Nikki Says:

Just a quick note to let you know that this page doesn’t render correctly in IE7. The main body content doest start below the header, there is a large white block and it starts level with the bottom of the left hand navigation.

10/10-2007 | 11:42

Minna Says:

A good education and lifelong learning is the success for the future. Because every company will take and keep the best employee.

15/10-2007 | 15:54

Nicola Says:

I have just dropped out of College for the very reason discussed by other commenters. I stuck it out for two months, but I’m supposed to be doing a websidte design course and the text books and handouts are five years out of date. I stuck with it for the first month, as I thought we would get past the stage of “this is a computer” and “You plug it in like this” but it has just got worse. 7 weeks into a two year course we have just started to talk about designing websites and the first thing on the agenda is designing in frames! Who the hell uses frames nowadays!
I have been lucky enough to get a job as a trainee web developer in a small local business, and I have learned more in two weeks there, than I did in two months at college. This government really needs to buck it’s ideas up!

18/10-2007 | 10:02

tommy - vornamen Says:

:) Reminds me a lot of a “web design agency” I used to work for as part timer besides my studies. CSS usually went right into the individual pages and when clients wanted alterations (and they ALWAYS wanted alteratins) you had to touch every single file.
The company was really cute though. Their ides of SEO was to put tiny hidden text in between the content blocks. i don’t think that ever worked:)
Well, I’m not complaining, I still learned a lot there…
(BTW, last thing I heard they’ve given up their business and started an online adult shop instead…)

19/10-2007 | 8:49

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21/10-2007 | 19:59

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22/10-2007 | 16:37

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Cool blog. Thanks for this good thread

26/10-2007 | 16:39

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29/10-2007 | 1:45

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30/10-2007 | 17:32

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30/10-2007 | 17:33

Kunstforum Says:

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10/01-2008 | 11:49

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