Does web design deserve its place on college campuses alongside English, engineering, and art history?
Some people think so and are rethinking how web design should be taught at the university level.
The problems, at first glance, are as obvious as they are abundant: technology changes too fast, university administration doesn’t offer worthwhile courses, draconian hiring guidelines mean interested industry experts without advanced degrees can’t teach, among others.
On the other hand, we risk over-correcting these perceived problems if our academic institutions simply play catch-up to technology.
Leslie Jensen-Inman‘s Elevate Web Design at the University Level, published last month in A List Apart, is a call to action to the web community and universities to change how web design is taught at most universities.
The Assistant Professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga interviewed 32 web design and development leaders searching for insight and opinion into how an undergraduate education prepares students for working in web design.
Jensen-Inman mentioned that generally, the 32 industry leaders indicated “these educators don’t have the resources to do what needs to be done”, and James Archer, CEO of marketing agency Forty, went so far as to say that his shop “won’t hire anyone who comes out of a university web design/development program” because “the culture of large educational institutions has, in my experience, consistently proven itself unable to cope with the demands of such a varied and fast-moving industry“.
Archer’s opinions open the door to finding many of the answers. However, those opinions also lead us to questions regarding the diversity of Jensen-Inman’s research.
First, when Jensen-Inman acknowledged the people interviewed were web design leaders, she may have been a bit modest. Many of these people she cites are published authors, mainstays on the speaking circuit, and are generally household names among practitioners in the industry.
Why could this be a problem?
Because it seems unlikely many of these first-class agencies would hire entry-level talent directly out of college anyway. While some of the quoted personalities work in larger teams (Cameron Moll leads a team of 30 practitioners of diverse backgrounds, for example), the majority of those interviewed appear to work either independently or in small boutique rock-star agencies.
I would rather have seen the interviews include leadership from companies who have hired young talent in the past, or at least make those who do stand out. Here in Washington DC, nclud and Viget Labs quickly come to mind as studios that have recruited recent grads who may not have a shelf of Webby Awards (yet) or a client list that reads like the Fortune 50.
I’m also surprised at the choice to exclude academic representation in the ALA article–particularly given Jensen-Inman’s assumed accessibility to college faculty, including her current employer, and where she studied her craft (University of Baltimore, Savannah College of Art and Design). Here we could have read unique perspectives from a private art school and a public institution, with both undergraduate and undergraduate programs. Jensen-Inman’s graduate-school colleagues could have also provided another glance at what they thought of web design in their experiences as well.
That said, there are a number of ways we can improve the skills of future web designers (not computer science majors, information systems majors, etc.) without sacrificing the academic integrity of a four-year liberal arts education.
My recommendations include:
- Offer certificates, not degrees in web design
- Allow industry experts to teach
- Create knowledge sharing opportunities for consistency among faculty
- Integrate web design concepts in more classes
First and foremost, four year colleges and universities shouldn’t be offering 60-credit majors in web design. With the cost of college today, students willingly asking (or wishing for their parents) to pay at least $3,000 (for an in-state 3 credit course) for 16 weeks of basic HTML instruction or how to use Flash is ridiculous. Similarly, 16 weeks of generic “web design” isn’t thorough enough to teach someone the difference between an h1 tag (vocational) and a mental model (abstract, academic). On top of that, a student may graduate with a degree in something more complex, well-rounded, and potentially meaningful than how to position a background image.
Enter the certificate. Graduate certificates are increasingly popular as a means of securing post-undergraduate accredited recognition of completing four to five courses in an area of specialization, without the time and expense of a complete graduate education.
Likewise, if students had the core knowledge of HTML and CSS (bear with me, I’ll get to that in a second), they could enroll in a small number of academic but professionally-focused classes at the undegraduate level (similar to this and this and here, not something like this).
For instance, I created a mock curriculum for a 15 credit undergraduate certificate as follows:
- principles of interface design
- choose one of two (depending on background):
typography & design theory
advanced presentation layer coding (PHP, JavaScript, advanced CSS, etc.) - choose one of three:
human factors & human-computer interaction
information architecture
introduction to web-based databases - 2 semester-long internships in different agencies, departments, etc.
- one special session determined by industry expert (pass/fail non-credit class)
Students interested in such a certificate will likely already be coming from a design or development background, or at minimum, have an interest in going down a design or development path. If a studio art student already has completed extensive courses in typography, then she would enroll in presentation layer coding to learn more about how to implement her ideas on the web, and vice versa for students coming from computer science or information systems classes.
Many of these courses are also already taught today across many college campuses, though perhaps by different names or exist only for graduate students.
Furthermore, and perhaps most important, is we keep an undergraduate education from turning into a vocational education and chasing technology. Quite the opposite, in fact: principles of interface design haven’t changed that much in 20 years, and such a class likely woudn’t be deconstructing last week’s gallery submission in trying to recreate gradient effects.
The education stays conceptual and philosophical and offers skills applicable in the workforce.
Some readers may quickly point out that such a class requires basic knowledge of HTML and understanding how an HTML page links to another in a browser.
(edited 2/13/2009)
As mentioned earlier, web design is far too complex to fit into one 16 week course, but is also comprised of many important elements that don’t necessarily require a full semester of time to explore and master.
Let’s see more 100 and 200-level classes that lay a foundation for how to design a web site using industry standards and best practices, and introduce timely, but not necessarily technical topics, such as accessibility, universality, semantic code, and how to use CSS and responsible implementation of multimedia and graphics. At this point, an interested student would likely be prepared to continue her academic career by studying graphic design, marketing, or information systems, or something completely unrelated should she so choose.
But we shouldn’t stop at those introductory classes. Returning to Jensen-Inman’s ideas, I would advocate enlisting the web community (or skilled graduate assistants) to teach vocational, non-academic “how-to” 8 week special sessions in web design fundamentals, likely about 2 hours per class, two classes per week, that could run throughout the calendar year so students are exposed to best-practices and informed instruction before they’ve established bad habits and even worse fundamentals.
These classes would be open to anyone with the cash–regardless of major, year in school, or lack of web experience. (end editing)
These instructors would also provide special break-out sessions to further explore their areas of expertise, be it in design patterns, kinetic typography, AJAX, or something else entirely. Ideally, if the web community develops a dialogue with those in higher education, there could be more than one special session available at one time, providing students the choice of pursuing a more tailored learning experience.
If these instructors have a graduate degree, that’s great. But we can’t continue to turn away motivated, qualified, experts in the field who understand the technology and have a passion to share their knowledge.
I’m not giving a free pass though: if you want to teach cognitive psychology, go to graduate school. But I don’t believe someone needs an MS to instruct students how to design for multiple browsers.
Jensen-Inman’s article also expands on a significant factor in improving web design in higher education: knowledge sharing between practitioners and faculty alike, through conferences, the blogosphere, and elsewhere.
When I was teaching, the entire direction of the class was completely up to me and independent of what was taught either in the past or simultaneously by other instructors. As a result, I was left to develop my own lesson plan, in-class lessons, and assignments without a community or network to offer guidance or advice when needed.
These classes would then feature consistent curriculum even if the instructor changes from session to session, and allow the instructor enough leeway to provide personal emphasis in his or her specialty.
Furthermore, let’s expand how the web and multimedia can go beyond portfolio sites in art classes. The more students engage in problem solving where the solutions are in web-based deliverables, the more those students can begin tying abstract concepts to concrete answers. Students learn that not every problem needs a nail, and not every answer starts with a hammer.
When I was an undergraduate, one of my 400-level (senior) English classes substituted a final term paper for a multimedia presentation analyzing Emily Dickinson’s poems. Another senior-level class opened its doors to students from the art, computer science, and English departments to create critical presentations in Toolbook investigating themes in the silent films of Communist Russia.
Were those forward-thinking, abstract courses recently discovered at an elite art school in New York or San Francisco? Hardly. I went to the University of Maryland. In 1998.
Do I reference “Bronenosets Potyomkin” on Tuesday staff meetings? Bring everyone down with a Dickinson reading after a successful launch? Of course not, but such skills, acquired early in my career, certainly help when a business analyst has a problem and wants me to design a solution.
I’m afraid if our colleges and universities begin offering majors with classes in how to create printer-friendly style sheets and connecting Visio shapes to one another, those students who think they’re getting a leg up on their web design competition may realize, as Matt Damon’s character says in “Good Will Hunting”, they “wasted $150,000 on an education [they] coulda got for a buck fifty in late charges at the public library”.
relevant background:
I earned an English degree from the University of Marlyand in 1998 and taught web design at the Corcoran College of Art and Design from 2005 to 2006. I also completed graduate study in human factors and human-computer interaction from UMBC in 2007.
Clarification (updated 2/13/2009):
Based on a few emails and other correspondence, and re-reading my position, I’d like to make clear that I’m not advocating that all things web, technology, or computer be removed from four-year colleges and Universities and college students go back to studying Sophocles and Aristotle under an olive tree.
I wholeheartedly support a college curriculum that includes advanced topics pertaining to web design: information architecture, human factors, graphic design, interface design, how to use JavaScript, and more.
What I don’t support is a 3 credit class in how to use Flash, or 16 weeks dedicated to JQuery.
A 3-credit introduction to web technologies, open to all students (not just computer science or engineering majors), with a curriculum that includes the myriad ways of learning outside the classroom, is also benefit to the student and the web community as a whole.
As a result, a student can graduate with a degree in art, architecture, or mechanical engineering and have a strong background in modern web design without having to choose between one major and the other.
