So, you want to be a Web Designer?

TT280 was introduced for the first time in May 2002 as a 10 point short course running for 12 weeks and as the first of the Web Applications Certificate courses. After the pilot presentation ran I decided to take the October presentation, thinking most of the wrinkles one expects in a new course would be ironed out. Not so! The course books didn't arrive until the last minute, and then the conference filled up so quickly with almost 400 people trying to make comments on the first course work that it was very hard to follow what was going on, and was discouraging to say the least. The third presentation has now been run, and I believe that a lot of the initial difficulties have now been sorted, although there are still problems with some CMA questions.

The subject matter is very interesting, you learn how to write HTML code by hand, and understand the principles of designing web pages which are accessible and meet the World Wide Web Consortium standards.

The course texts consist of two books, which are supplied:

• html second edition by reding/vodnik
• designing web sites by joel sklar

Both of these are published in the USA by Thomson Learning.

Each of these books consists of 8 or 9 lessons. There are exercises at the end of these lessons, most of which you are supposed to attempt. There are no answers provided at the end of the book and so we relied on the course team to publish the answers. These were late in being posted which was frustrating but did appear in the end.

Each week of the course also has an associated Study Guide which explains the work ahead for that week and adds extra information not contained in the course books. These Study Guides are published on the course desktop, but often were not available until very close to the start date for the week. This was frustrating as you could not get ahead if you wanted to. Hopefully this has now been resolved.

ASSESSMENT

CMAs

There were 3 CMAs to be submitted on this course, the first coming at about the 4-week mark. These consisted of around 20 multiple choice questions which were deceptively difficult, especially when some of the questions were found to be unsound or were confusing in what was required. This caused a fair bit of angst in the conferences and I believe some people dropped out because of the problems. I believe the problems with some questions still exists after the third presentation.

Do read the Study Guides carefully as some of the CMA answers were contained in them. It's easy to overlook these when searching for answers to the questions.

Results for the CMAs took around 10 days or so to appear on the student pages. Correct answers took even longer to materialise, which is unsatisfactory in such a short course, especially when people are depending on the answers to help their understanding of the subject. Hopefully this problem has been sorted out by now.

The ECA
We had the specifications for the ECA early on, which was a plus if you are organised and already have some experience of coding HTML. The requirement was to design four templates for a company which specialised in premium quality stainless steel cookware. The company was supposed to have been in existence for 400 years, and so had a fair bit of history tucked away. The proposal for the web site was to design a home page, a sample catalogue page, a history page, plus a survey form page. These pages must validate as HTML 4.01 transitional. A 2000 word two part report was required which would lay out your recommendations for the web site as the web designer. You needed to say why you would pick certain layouts and features on the site. A Cascading Style Sheet is required for the templates, so you will need to have a good grip on this subject.

One part of the report is a Site Diagram, which is a diagram of your proposed structure for the web site, clearly showing the location of each of the four template pages you've designed, along with an explanation. There was some discussion about the site diagram in the conferences during the last presentation and at the last minute it was decided to address this topic In the Teach conference. Four pdf files on Site Maps with step by step instructions as to how to produce one were posted. Again, hopefully these resources will be made available earlier in the next presentation.

Since templates were allowed to be freely examined by other students and comments/suggestions made, I have published my pages on this website for the curious to observe! The actual report I submitted has not been published here at this time to avoid plagiarism (although I'm sure you're all far too honest to do such a thing!).

The main criticism I would make of the ECA report was not really knowing what to produce and having no example of what was expected. A guide to report writing was provided on the TT280 desktop but many felt this was insufficient.

Update after results received (23 March 2003)
I received my results and was pleased with my Grade 2 pass. However, when I checked the OES part of the result (the ECA part) I found my score was only 73% compared to 90% on the CMAs throughout the course. I was rather disappointed with this grade as I put a lot of work into the report and web pages. On checking the TT280 survivor's web conference (yes, people DO survive this course!) I was surprised to find many other people complaining of low ECA scores, much lower than mine, in many cases. Fair enough, you say, perhaps you didn't address the relevant topics in your report. Well, quite possibly.

At this moment in time we have no indication of where we went wrong. There is no feedback letter, unfortunately. All the 10 point science courses I have previously done have had feedback letters, which have been fairly useful in at least pointing out the areas of error and where you did well. I am hoping this will be reversed for future presentations.

Course Book Contents

HTML Second Edition

Contents:

• Creating an HTML Document
• Formatting text with html
• Adding Graphics and Multimedia
• Using Forms to Control Input
• Working with Tables
• Controlling Page Layout
• Designing Web Pages
• Scripting for HTML

Designing Web Pages

Contents:

• Understanding the Web Design Environment
• Understanding Web Design Principles
• Planning the Site
• Planning Site Navigation
• Understanding Tables
• Understanding Web Typography
• Using Graphics and Colour
• Understanding HTML Frames
• Publishing and Maintaining Your Web Site

Recommendations for getting through this course.

• DON'T PANIC!
• Don't try to do all the exercises!
• Don't be discouraged by other people's experience in coding. Just go at your own pace. Other people's expertise can come in handy if you have problems.
• Do use the First Class conferences often, for help, or just a chat. It can make all the difference to getting through the course sane!

I can wholeheartedly recommend the following book:

Web Design in a Nutshell 2nd Edition, by Jennifer Niederst. ISBN: 0596001967.

Also, if you're looking for some light relief and wonder what the real lives of Jaime and Grace from Nomads must be like, then have a look at Nomads, courtesy of Keith Evetts, a tale of web design folk.

In Summary

This course is very time-consuming, especially if you have no hand-coding experience of HTML. You will usually need to complete 2 course book chapters a week plus read the Study Guide, which along with the exercises takes a fair bit of time, so make sure you have enough time available - from about 10 hours to as much as 20 hours a week according to some people! The CMAs may take you longer than you anticipate. Make sure you allow enough time for them. The ECA templates could take you a lot longer than you anticipate, depending on your previous experience. If you've never designed any web pages before then you will find this takes a lot of your time, especially as you have to validate the pages to W3C standards. You need to start on your ECA at least 3 weeks before the end of the course, preferably earlier to give yourself enough time to sort out glitches in the page designs. The report is a challenge especially if you have no/little experience of report writing.

Over all I would recommend this course as it is interesting and the problems we encountered are bound to be improved upon in the next presentation. The course moderators were excellent, clearly explaining many technical problems and passing our queries on to the course team. The camaraderie of the other students in the online conferences was outstanding, providing many a light moment when the mood was low.