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Teach The Web

Last year, Leslie Jensen-Inman was working on her graduate thesis and interviewed a cast of shady characters including Andy Budd, (Gentleman) Jon Hicks, Jeremy Keith and yours truly on the subject of web design and development education.

Congratulations to Leslie as earlier this month she graduated and earned her Masters in Fine Arts in Integrated Design. With graduation under her belt, Leslie has launched Teach The Web, complete with her thesis monograph and all thirty-two of her interviews.

Leslie’s hope is that by sharing the answers,

[..] they will help others to continue to improve the education of web designers and developers.

I do too, and I particularly enjoyed reading everyone’s answers to the How can colleges and universities keep web design and/or development curriculum current and relevant? question. Joe Clark’s answer in particular made me laugh out loud — Stop hiring losers as teachers.

Look out for tomorrow’s A List Apart where Leslie will publish an article inspired by her research.

Leave your comment

Judson Collier

January 20 2009 @ 12:04pm #

There was a bit of conversation on Jeffery’s blog (see comments as well), as short lived as it was.

But still, something to consider. As mentioned in my comment, I’m in High School, and you just can’t touch anything related to computers here; (and I suppose most things that are taught in highschool are outdated; anyone with a decent skill level in web design doesn’t find much gratification in teaching an elective High School class in America unless they really want to).

But web design is a paticularly fast moving career, and to be a ‘good’ web designer your expected to followup and learn every new thing that comes along, which makes it difficult to be taught by someone who isn’t taking the time out to do the same… a teacher wont have the same experience as an actual designer will;

Even then, it’s difficult to find someone with an equal balance of usability/design and markup.

Which is what makes all these summits/conferences/workshops and blogs so important to participate in…

Just my two cents :).

Steve Killen

January 20 2009 @ 11:46pm #

I think if the basics of accesibility and usability are taught on the course than it would not risk going out of date as much as a course on, say,  CSS3/HTML5.  As long as students get the basic markup right they can add to it on their own with their own interpretation.

Look forward to that A List Apart article. :)

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