This is a list of Manchester Metropolitan University student’s final web design and development projects.
I don’t mean to sound like a massive snob, but quite frankly I’m appalled.
These students pay £10,000 for a 3 year degree course, broken into modules including website design, web application development and digital media production.
Where is digital education going wrong? You be the judge.
Agreed – they’re all pretty appalling. Only student8 (@craftedpixelz) and the 3rd group project (from the same person I suspect) stand out as something worthy of that level, and I’d guess they knew what they were doing before they started the course…
That’s why Abid (@craftedpixelz) works with us @blisshq!
This is going to end in tears….
Wow.
Wow, the majority of them are horrendous! I don’t think the education alone can be blamed, it’s down to the student as well. You can’t teach good design, that part comes with practice and experience.
So is it the course not providing the platform/guidance/theory, or the student not putting in the effort to self-teach outside of the course? In some of these examples it seems to be a case of both!
Hey Will, of course that’s very true. Design can’t so much be taught, although the principles can.
Perhaps it’s a balance of the two, although I believe in some cases some of the students don’t really care about the course, they’re just in it for a degree (not my words!).
Like Luc said above, there are a couple of examples that stand out that evidently represent the students who are genuinely interested in what they’re doing.
However that’s still irrelevant. The point that disgusts me is that people are digging themselves into tens of thousands of pounds worth of debt, wasting 3 years of their lives and coming out with the above. They’re going to simply walk into jobs aren’t they?!
If it’s the student’s decision not to put the effort in then so be it. But shouldn’t educational institutions be making more effort to inspire and educate more effectively?
I’d like it if there were to be some full blown discussion on this. From students, tutors and those working in the industry.
It’d be interesting to hear the thoughts from each side, in order to ascertain what’s being done to produce the next generation of web professionals.
For me I think it was a case of the courses trying to be too broad, I learnt a little about accessibility but was also learning Macromedia director at the same time.
As I said in a tweet, I feel that I learnt more in 3 months at my job after uni than I did for the whole 3 years at uni but maybe that is my fault for not self-learning although I did get my arse in gear and teach myself a bit of PHP and stuff for my dissertation project. I don’t think that education provides the solid foundation that it could and should do, the courses seems to be aimed too broadly to try and provide something for everyone and sometimes seem quite out of touch with the latest technologies and tools.
Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t change my decision to go to university, it was some of the best times in my life but that is because of the social aspect rather than what I learnt, I’m quite happy with what I owe because I feel that it was worth it at the end of the day, although I know a lot of people that don’t. What university taught me was a greater understanding of how to learn, and while that may sound stupid, I think that is what gave me the inquisitiveness and drive to teach myself a lot of what I know now.
My suggestion to everyone in college would be to definitely go to university but try to pick a defined course that has a good reputation and a work experience / placement for a year because that year will most likely be where you learn most of your skills as I am sure Abid and I know Mark Weston can attest to. I didn’t do that, I wish I had, I would probably be a bit further along that I am now but that’s life, hindsight is a bitch.
That’s true and in my experience of university there were many who didn’t care about the course and were happy to get any kind of degree!… I think that’s a problem with university education as a whole: Degree != job.
To do well on these types of courses definitely requires passion on the students half and if they can’t be inspired by the internet & web design, then there’s no hope. The institutions can definitely do more, such as talks from actual web designers and not lecturers. The only excuse they have is that these courses are relatively new and need refining.
MMU = Highway robbers
DISCLAIMER
I would just like to note that I by no means intend to spite the hard work that students on this course have put in, or insult their abilities.
The objective of this post was to highlight that universities aren’t pulling their weight when it comes to taking large sums of money and attempting to teach a subject that is increasingly essential to both the economy and the landscape of today’s society.
Web design, development, social media, digital marketing and like are rapidly evolving subjects. If the institutions proposing to educate people on these subjects can’t keep up themselves… what hope is there?
In my experience at University, there were 3 students in my year (including me) that showed a genuine interest in designing for the web. Others I spoke to felt that they hadn’t learnt enough during the course in order to pursue a career in the field. Admittedly, this will in part be down to their lack of self development and progression, yet I still ask myself what the universities are doing in order to inspire students and make them want to go and discover their niche.
I found that a lot of the modules I was made to undertake were full of waffle that wasn’t relevant to a career in the web. Other modules that were relevant, were taught badly and generally the course was quite outdated.
HTML/CSS is taught from work books put together in 1995, I recall having ONE lecture on design principles, PHP lessons consisted of copying/pasting code snippets, without gaining an understanding of what they did and assignment briefs stated things such as “Tables may be used for laying out your website, although CSS is preferred”. WTF?
In my opinion, the curriculum was outdated, muddled and contained too much waffle, when it should have been focusing on the fun aspects and helping students to build on basic skills, whist allowing them to leverage more complex techniques in the later stages.
Things need to change, but it’s unlikely any curriculum will be able to keep up with the fast changing face of the web.
Some people just don’t have the eye for aesthetic design and these people won’t get a job designing websites. They may however get a job developing websites, as they all seem to have competent-ish skills at putting together the mark-up.
Everyone starts somewhere, I remember being at college with Abid (above) and we would just modify free templates and pass it off as our own and look where he is now…
It will be interesting to see one of the above students take on the course and whether they feel they enhanced their learning out of university.
=O I never did such a thing Thomas!
He still does that now!!
This is just sad… by the looks of it the problem is that they were having to learn Dreamweaver as well as html, css, db etc. Can’t do that in the limited (usually 11-13 weeks for a module) time. The brief also seems to be quit restrictive. Nothing really inspiring for the students to get engaged with.
When I taught Web Design, I let the students choose what kind of site they wanted, as long as it validated. All coding was done in a text editor, so that they could work on it at home as well.
Like any other subject, Web Design needs to be taught by someone who actually enjoys it rather than treating it as just another project for the students to complete.
Thanks for the input everyone.
@Colin – “Web Design needs to be taught by someone who actually enjoys it” – couldn’t agree more, although this would ideally be the case with all subjects!
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Now now children, we seem to have strayed off topic a wee bit here eh?
If you’ve got some differences to settle then I suggest a good competitive game of Tiddlywinks – works everytime for me!
@Zahid – in Abid’s defence; we’ve all been there as designers. It’s the easiest way to get your head around bringing the tools that Photoshop offers and interactive design principles together. You’re more than welcome to express your own views on here but before you start making direct digs at Crafty Pixel – what have you got to show for yourself?
Nathan
Zahid, I was only joking. You seem to have sort of personal issue with Abid. Your on the wrong place for that really kidda.
Abid, good luck at JWT, you’ll do well.
My Web education was really basic we had one class where we all designed a homepage and then the tutor let me upload the whole of mine as an image and we used go live! Im now a competent web developer not because of my higher education but because i got a job with a company who where happy to train me from scratch.
Unfortunately I’ve been asked to removed some of the comments due to some false accusations and rather immature name calling.
Personal issues shouldn’t be dragged out over a comment thread, although I respect that the topic of my post may have caused offense to certain people.
It is worth remembering that web design is something that can – to an extent – be self-taught. Therefore, the ball is in the court of the student to a large extent.
Too many late nights for some of these chaps i reckon.
All subject matter concerning the internet in formal teaching, HAS to be job specific.
Its great to write an essay on the beginnings of the internet, blah, blah, but students have to know what skills potential employees are looking for, then read, practice and create.
If not, the course is just acedemic theory.
From day one, students should be building websites, optimising them for the web, then promoting.
I’ve come across a few students in their second year, who say they have learnt some xhtml, php, etc. but nothing to show for it aprt from a few essays and bit of code and design.
Basically, more vocational work that acedemic theory.
Manchester web design
Looking at these websites I’m pretty shocked. If you spend that much on web design or web development course, you would think that it would be taught to a high standard. However university is a lot about your own hard work and taking time to learn things yourself. I did a course in Graphic Design and we were given a brief module on the web. The end result of most of the people on my course was better than what is being displayed by these final years. I think it would be hard to come to a conclusion of whether it is the University’s fault or the student, I think I would consider it to be a bit of both.
The websites that the students have produced show that they have basic development skills. At degree level, they should be creating quality work. I know from experience myself that many lecturers leave the technical stuff for the student to learn in their own time. I agree with Luc, the ones that created the good websites, most likely knew what they were doing before hand. The university education system really needs to be taken a look at, when it comes to the web courses.
I wanted to write a long post on this but Time constraints do not permit me – however I will put just one line – “Education does make difference and it opens up the mind”
I’m a Freelance web designer and also a first year at MMU. Luckily though, I’m not taking the degree that’s listed above, instead, computer science. However, in the first year one of my ‘introduction to multimedia and the WWW’ assignments is to build a HTML page… Wait for it… in HTML 4! Seriously, it’s such bull. The lecturers over there are clueless. I argued that they shouldn’t be teaching what is quite frankly, an outdated language in a rapidly developing industry. Their arguement was that we could get a client who requests a website that conforms to web standards and they require the site to be in HTML 4. My arguement to that was simple. “You are talking out of your arse.”
It needs kicking into touch and the lecturers need to be shot. The Web stuff needs to be taught by someone young and creative, not someone who is 40+ and old fashioned and putting it simply, ‘not with it.’
Well Matthew judging by your own work it’s obvious you know what you’re doing, looks like you’ll just have to blow your tutor’s expectations out of the water!
A very interesting article with some interesting comments. I think the question is if its the university or the pupil who is the most responsible for the standard and quality of the work. Whilst there are are some examples that show potential I agree that the overall standard is pretty poor. I think especially considering the costs involved in further education every effort should be made by the pupils themselves to really make the most of each and every project. I think there has to be a certain level of self education in order for pupils to really develop. However whilst you cannot teach creativity I do believe more could be done to help inspire pupils in terms of design ideas and inspiration. It’s down to the university to teach not only how to build websites but how to design them as well.
There’s a lot of things wrong with the web education in schools today. Follow people like @anna_debenham and see what she’s trying to accomplish. Also, get involved with P2P Web Craft where you have the opportunity to contribute to courses that are available on the web to improve the education resources outside of the classroom.