What should be included in a basic web design course?

py2006

Hi all,

If you were to run a short course in the basics of web design, what would you include?

The obvious is HTML but what about the theory behind it etc?

Fanny Cradock

It depends what you mean by basic. Are we talking a few days here of a course that runs for weeks? If it's for the latter then I think the following are essential.

XHTML (Web Standards, including accessibility)
CSS
Photoshop or similar (Discussions about things like different file types etc.)
Intro to copyright
Hosting, including FTP clients etc.
Client interaction
CMS - wordpress or some such

jmcc

Page design, the grid system, an introduction to typography. (How to stop your webpage design looking like a ransom note.) Scaling images for the web.

Regards...jmcc

tricky D

py2006 wrote: »

Hi all,

If you were to run a short course in the basics of web design, what would you include?

The obvious is HTML but what about the theory behind it etc?

Learning HTML is too often dismissed as simply that. Too many courses don't give a fuller picture of it. If I was putting a course together I'd start with basic HTML for learning about document structure, semantics and page interactions (HCI), expanding into XHTML and then HTML5. Bear in mind we still need old HTML including what are now bad practices for HTML emails. Then a small bit of history of browsers with a view to tackling browser, renderer and css incompatibility issues which 'waste' so much of our time. Just learning plain old XHTML misses too much of the picture. Also more instruction on the use of tools like validators, diagnostics, management and development tools. Some more server stuff would be good too.

As for web design, too often it is poorly appreciated and undervalued. Ah sure it's simple to do up a web page, anyone can do it. Well there's a lot more to it than many realise. Bad design is easy, good design requires a huge skillset and loads of experience. As for where to start, that depends on your goals.

py2006

Thanks for the responses guys!

Its a very short course! One evening a week over 5 weeks so unfortunately there wouldn't be a lot of time for some of the stuff suggested!

They are expecting to learn Dreamweaver and Fireworks. However I hope to start off with some basic HTML and encourage them from there!

p

Decide what you're actually teaching. Are you teaching design, or are you teaching building websites, are you teaching coding? All different things.

A good grounding in HTML & CSS would be very useful for some, but others might prefer to be taught how to setup a Wordpress site, whereas others would like to focus on the visual & interaction design side of things.

Liam Byrne

I'd agree with Fanny Craddock above, except for the WordPress aspect; personally speaking, that would be a separate WordPress course for those interested in that (and including the hosting and copyright aspects in that course too)

py2006

p wrote: »

Decide what you're actually teaching. Are you teaching design, or are you teaching building websites, are you teaching coding? All different things.

A good grounding in HTML & CSS would be very useful for some, but others might prefer to be taught how to setup a Wordpress site, whereas others would like to focus on the visual & interaction design side of things.

Well I intend covering the basics of HTML and strongly encouraging them to spend considerable time outside of the course familiarising themselves with HTML and CSS.

cormee

Design.

py2006

cormee wrote: »

Design.

Eh, could ya be more specific?

cormee

py2006 wrote: »

Eh, could ya be more specific?

Design theory, design process, best-practices, colour theory.

And maybe usability and accessibility

I've only just seen your post where you say it's only a five night course, so you probably won't be able to cover any of that.

Who is this course intended for?

S.M.B.

It all depends on what people doing the course expect to get out of it by the end.

business bloomer

Basics of Web design... in 5 days... I would focus on "How to build a Website from scratch" then. So:

- HTML basics
- hosting, and hosting providers
- domain, and domain providers
- FTP vs CMS
- graphics editor vs buy graphics online
- tips for SEO
- social networks integration

BarackPyjama

cormee wrote: »

Design theory, design process, best-practices, colour theory.

...and typography I would say.

Folks, you can learn all the HTML, JQuery, Photoshop, etc. that you like but without the fundamentals of design, you won't go very far. All web design education should start as far away from technology as possible.

S.M.B.

You can go far enough without having any knowledge of design principles.

I do think that you should take a day out of the course to cover a different section. Give people a basic understanding and hopefully they'll come out with a basic understanding of some key principles and an idea on what to do next.

py2006

cormee wrote: »

Design theory, design process, best-practices, colour theory.

And maybe usability and accessibility

I've only just seen your post where you say it's only a five night course, so you probably won't be able to cover any of that.

Who is this course intended for?

Yea unfortunately there wouldn't be the time for this! Its for beginners!

site designer

I have often taught about this and I feel any balanced web design/development course would be best broken down into 3 lessons plans/areas

Lesson Plan:

Area 1: (i) HTML and CSS: emphasis on creating menu's with ul's and li' and getting used to positioning with floats etc . done in dreamweaver text editor
(ii) FTP registering domain SEO etc.

Area 2: (i) Photoshop. designing site entirely in Photoshop, copying popular designs.
(ii) Saving each layer using best practises (format, dimensions) and recreating your PSD into HTML & CSS.


Area 3: (i)PHP and MySQL setting up DB's. includes files, some wordpress customization maybe.
(ii)Javascript download and implement code.


With Area 3 you can obviously get as complex as you want. Frustrating seeing courses that are padded out with so much bull**** and often ignoring vital area's I've covered there.

OctavarIan

py2006 wrote: »

Yea unfortunately there wouldn't be the time for this! Its for beginners!

At least make it clear to your students that they should research those areas themselves. Give them a reading list or something. Otherwise selling it as a web design class would be disingenuous.

gnolan

BarackPyjama wrote: »

...and typography I would say.

Folks, you can learn all the HTML, JQuery, Photoshop, etc. that you like but without the fundamentals of design, you won't go very far. All web design education should start as far away from technology as possible.

I often thought about this. Can anyone recommend some good reading on design principles and the fundamentals of design? Something that will be directly transferable to web design but not necessarily aimed at web designers.

py2006

I'd love to have the time to prepare and deliver a course incorporating all these aspects!

Unfortunately, I am struggling even to create notes on HTML and Dreamweaver!

-Chris-

Will the students of your course (beginners with minimal investment in web design so far) have access to Dreamweaver?

Would you not work on/recommend something free?

py2006

-Chris- wrote: »

Will the students of your course (beginners with minimal investment in web design so far) have access to Dreamweaver?

Would you not work on/recommend something free?

I believe most of them do as they are anxious to learn it.

inov8ionz

The basics on SEO & the importance of it

py2006

inov8ionz wrote: »

The basics on SEO & the importance of it

Could you expand?

paulgalway

Hi py2006,

If you are looking for guidance, suggest you look at other organisations currently providing a web design course and see what they are doing.

I know fas, for example, do a course for beginners lasting 25-30 hrs approx.

HairMonster

If they are beginners they can't realistically expect to become web designers in a week, so find out what they want from the course and concentrate on that (most probably the steps on how to make a website in Dreamweaver). Its better that they come out knowing how to do one thing well than having covered lots but not understanding most of it.

And believe me, that will probably take the full 5 nights to cover if you have even a couple of students who don't have the basics. Just how much of a "beginner" are your students going to be? In my experience, some beginners don't have any basic technical skills (e.g saving files :eek:) and I've seen 60-hour 10-week courses not manage to cover the basics of HTML/CSS, DW & PS because of this. Even assuming basic skills, IMO 5 nights is not enough to cover the huge topic of Web Design. Most beginners appear to struggle with HTML/CSS so I certainly don't believe you will have time to address SEO, design principles, Wordpress, databases, scripting or programming.

My advice - keep it simple and stick to one topic, and you might actually have students who learn how to do something instead of ending up confused with partial pieces of information. If they want to know more, they really need to do a longer or more advanced course.

HairMonster

paulgalway wrote: »

If you are looking for guidance, suggest you look at other organisations currently providing a web design course and see what they are doing.

I know fas, for example, do a course for beginners lasting 25-30 hrs approx.

Excellent advice. You will see that there are courses of 10+ nights that concentrate solely on one topic, such as the basics of Dreamweaver or Photoshop, so its unrealistic to expect to cover you can't hope to cover both plus web design & development in 5 nights.

Unless it changed, the FAS Web design course was 60 hours, and that only covered the basics: HTML, CSS & Dreamweaver (and by basics, I mean stuff like colouring text, adding backgrounds and making links, i.e. VERY basic); how to manipulate images and text in Photoshop; and an overview of hosting. There were no "advanced" topics such as scripting or databases, and design principles or SEO were not even mentioned.

And even at that, some people still couldn't manage to create a web page at the end. That's why my advice for 5 nights is to stick to one thing and you have some chance of them learning!

py2006

Thanks guys, yea there will be not scripting or database or anything like that. Basic html, css and dreamweaver.

Although, I would like to do something on hosting with them.

Fanny Cradock

py2006 wrote: »

.

Although, I would like to do something on hosting with them.

I would think that is an essential. It seems rather pointless learning how to code and then not know how to put your work up. YOu should also cover the basics of image editing.

I would think that at the end of the course your students should have an idea how to build the most basic of sites -

Banner Image (give a few days to the basics of Gimp or whatever and the difference between gifs, jpegs and pngs)
Menu
Content (make sure to cover floats)
Footer

and then how to host it.

py2006

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

I would think that is an essential. It seems rather pointless learning how to code and then not know how to put your work up. YOu should also cover the basics of image editing.

I would think that at the end of the course your students should have an idea how to build the most basic of sites -



and then how to host it.

The only thing about hosting is its kind of hard to demonstrate. I can only really talk about it in theory.

Fanny Cradock

not necessarily. If you get your own hosting you can let the class store their work there.

www.yousite.com/student1
www.yousite.com/student2

It might cost €50 but if it's a course running for a number of weeks I think that it is only fair.