Web Teaching Day hosted by the Department of Information and Communications at Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester UK in conjunction with the BSC in Web Development.

Seminar or Conversation?

I initially raised the question asking if we go all the way with another days conference, or settle for a simple conversation  (with whoever turns up). After a lot of positive feedback and offers from speakers I’ve decided that we should be brave and run another Web teaching day conference. This does mean that I’ve pulled the plug on September 5th, 2011, but it also means we have a bit more time to pull together an exciting programme.

So apologies if you had the 5th in your diary, but stick with us and we will get further information to you asap.

So what next?

Once a date can be agreed with our potential speakers we’ll get the ball rolling again. There’s still room for a few more speakers. Drop me a line if you are interested or just curious. r.eskins@mmu.ac.uk.

Spread the word

Finally I need you help. Please spread the word to colleagues and contacts. We had a fantastic response, but this was primarily from my personal contacts and those who attended last year.

At MMU our recent review of New Media provision identified related subjects in Art and Design, Computing, The Business School and Humanities. Help us get the word to your colleagues and friends who teach in various these areas.

Send them back here so we can get them involved as well.

Starting the conversation

I am going to add a few ideas here, the sort of thing that should be discussed, debated at a Web Teaching Day.

HTML5

My students are already producing some excellent work in HTML5. I haven’t started teaching HTML5. We’ve started at the top by having Richard Clark of HTML5 Doctor coming in to give us the basics. However, for me there are two key issues leading up to teaching HTML5.

The first is do I start with HTML5? My current position is no. Why? There are a few reasons. First is legacy. Most code a graduate is going to come across will be pre-HTML5. Second is history. Most of the clever dudes doing HTML5 niceness have a history of HTML/XHTML. They have previous. If you start with HTML5 you don’t. And finally, and most important for me: HTML5 brings back sloppy coding. You can get away with unclosed tags etc. Every book/article I’ve read says fine, just bring across your own standards and good practices from XHTML (closing tags, lower case tags and attributes etc.).

So for me, still starting with XHTML seems a good way of embedding those good practices that they can then take into HTML5 later. As I’m dealing with academic work I use these standards and best practices as my markers. How can your work be very good if you failed to simply validate your code? How can it be excellent if your alt text is missing or irrelevant?

Once they can produce clean, valid, semantic XHTML I’d see the graduation to HTML5 a simpler process.

The Development Process

My students go through the site development process which follows a simple model of:

Research > Design > Build > Launch

Of course this includes competitor analysis, client briefings, personas, card sorting, prototyping, wireframes, user testing, accessibility audits, the html, the css, coding, programing, content analysis, content creation etc. But what really goes on?

Each agency or freelancer I discuss this with have their patterns, procedures and methods. It would be good to hear (as a teacher) about these methods. Rapid prototyping? Systems methodologies? Project management?

We drag our students (screaming) into groups to manage and develop these projects as a team. In the future those teams might go wider. An IA from us, a backend dev from another department, a designer from another, an SEO guru from another, a front-end dev from us; oh and content developers (writers, video, audio, multimedia).Why not? Real teams. Real projects. Real mentoring (from industry)?

How and what we teach?

This of course is a question asked of most degree courses. It’s asked a lot about courses that cover a discipline that changes as frequently as web design/development. It might be what programming language, what standard, what methodology. Is this computer science, is it information management, is it marketing, business systems or is it really about design? To one professional this is the way to go, this is the future, this is what everyone is doing, this is what everyone will be doing. To another professional, that’s crazy; we dropped that last year. Not easy.

Then there’s the practical aspects. Some years I’ve had a day (or two) to prepare for the next academic year. Sadly most of us don’t have time develop, improve and widen our knowledge as much as we would like. We all cope in our own different ways. We do what we can.

So what do I do. Well I give them the basics, hopefully a sound grounding in standards based, semantic code.  I beat them over the head with accessibility and usability. I take them though the process from start to launch. I bring in practitioners in as guest speakers to expand on subjects, to give a professional viewpoint. I give them coursework that hopefully gives them space to practice, develop skills (not just coding – things like pitching for work, user testing). I act like a client in my assignment briefs. I’m the client, I want you to do this, at this standard. Failure to comply leads to loss of payment (marks).

Where do I fail? Mostly on the coding side. I don’t do; therefore I don’t have time to pick up on all those nice touches beyond the basics. All the CSS cleverness etc. Does this matter? To me; yes, I’d like to be more in touch. To the students? To some, to other’s, those really interested they are happily developing these skills anyway. If they get stuck I can always point them to resources. This is nothing new. As a student in the early 90′s, in a basic programming class most of the learning was done by working and sharing with the rest of the cohort. A good teacher acts as a guide, a conduit.

Employability. A key factor is about the students being ready for employment. In my case it’s not just my web design. My students study a variety of other units. These include units about media and computer law, information management, designing for online learning, project management, management skills etc. On other degrees it will be a whole other set of knowledge. It might be more design focused, marketing or programming. As an employer you can currently choose from this mix.

My better students get work. Some avoid the web world. It might be teaching, further study, IT graduate schemes or MacDonalds. There are those that struggle. They perhaps have been having too good a time as a student. They didn’t go that bit extra and develop their skills. They definitely don’t have a portfolio of work to show the world. But then again they might only be 21. Most 21 year olds won’t do what they don’t have to. We are looking at ways to overcome this. We are looking at ways to ensure that more are leaving us better prepared, with a professionally reviewed portfolio in hand, ready to impress.