Comments on: Web Development Should Be a Third Level Degree

By: Teknovis » B.Sc. in Web Development and Design

Teknovis » B.Sc. in Web Development and Design — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 00:10:21 +0000

[…] read an interesting idea for a B.Sc. in Web Development and Design in Web Development Should Be a Third Level Degree. This idea is particularly interesting because it comes from the Lead Software Developer in […]

By: TheChrisD

TheChrisD — Tue, 05 May 2009 18:03:13 +0000

I wholeheartedly agree that there should be a course like this made available somewhere. For someone who wants to do work in web development, it’s hard to find the ideal course right now.

Also, CAIS is a load of crap. Although I can’t say much given I’ll be repeating second year of CASE again next year…

By: Kevin Cannon

Kevin Cannon — Mon, 04 May 2009 21:24:33 +0000

Hey Ross, thanks for the support on my blog.

I also dropped out of CA in DCU, but transferred over to the Multimedia degree and found that quite enjoyable. Not perfect by any means but a good foundation to move into the design field, and many of my classmates have gone on to great things in web development, graphic design, audio production, video editing to start with.

I’ve often wondering about a course like you suggested. The only criticism is that in theory, something like CA should prepare you to be a programmer in a wide variety of areas, not just training in web development. College courses are supposed to give you an overall education, rather than training you in a specific sector.

Having said, that it’s still an interesting idea, certainly a masters in it would be very useful too. A degree could work very well with two streams, design & development, with a lot of core courses in principles like User Experience, Information Architecture and then branching off for the designers into Typography, Photography, digital design, 3D modelling etc. Or perhaps there could be two courses run parallel over 4 years with common modules. With a solid design & dev teams that you would have, you could produce some amazing stuff and prepare some great graduates for the industry.

By: Matt Finucane

Matt Finucane — Sun, 03 May 2009 15:00:11 +0000

If you look at some of the DCU lecturers webpages today they are exactly the same as they were in 2001 Brings me back so it does.

By: Matt Finucane

Matt Finucane — Sun, 03 May 2009 14:59:32 +0000

Another thought I had about the course in DCU. Like most things you learn in school or college I think it’s all more a matter of selection and conditioning than rote learning and regurgitation, so you are ready to work in the real world and tackle bigger problems. All those trigonometry functions I did in the leaving cert have yet to serve me 8 years on, but I’m sure I am here now because I was able to do them.

By: Dave Concannon

Dave Concannon — Sun, 03 May 2009 13:44:43 +0000

Just another thought: I think it’s more the nature of colleges that causes things like a web course which teaches “font” tags in HTML etc. Lecturers aren’t there to lecture, for the most part lecturing is the annoying thing they have to do when they’re not researching their Phd / area of interest. It’s not particularly in their interest to be updating their courses all the time, and in some cases they may not have any great experience in what they are teaching (inheriting notes from previous professors etc). It’s a pity really.

By: Ross

Ross — Sun, 03 May 2009 13:41:30 +0000

@matt Thanks for the comment, and for our conversation which was the seed of this post

@dave Some very strong points there alright, I am absolutely with you on theory. It’s one of the most important things I learned from my time in DCU, and I could undoubtedly do with more. Coming straight into programming without those concepts would have been disastrous for me, and I’ve seen the results of a lack of formal education in programming all over the place.
It would certainly need to be fundamental to any such course.

You also make a good point about analytics and metrics, something I somehow managed to overlook in my hypothetical course!

By: Dave Concannon

Dave Concannon — Sun, 03 May 2009 13:33:10 +0000

I can relate to your experience in DCU 100%. I made my way through the first two years and found myself entirely bored, so disappeared into the working world for a few years before eventually completing the degree as an evening student.

On the other hand, after a few years some of the more theory-based concepts that I was taught really came in useful, particularly in the software engineering side of things. Your description of a web-developer course misses out the “middle” part of the development picture – you have server configuration and front-end, but it takes people through frameworks without explaining the decisions as to why things are done that way, explaining the concept of MVC / separation of various layers and software design patterns etc. Also, I think for anyone in web development it’s crucial to know about analytics and metrics.

Don’t get me wrong though, if there had been a similar course available when I was picking college I’d have been all over it like a cheap suit. I’d love to see a course like this started for transition year students.

By: Matt Finucane

Matt Finucane — Sun, 03 May 2009 13:25:51 +0000

Excellent post Ross and some very good points made. I too feel that the web design industry needs to be taken far more seriously in Ireland than it is now.
Unfortunately it seems that anyone with a pirate copy of Dreamweaver or even Frontpage 4.0 (shudder) become ‘professional’ web designers. I am hopeful that the proper internet professionals who follow best practices and don’t cut corners will weather the economic storm and rise to the top when people start realising web design cannot be a cottage industry run by anyone.

I studied for 4 years in CA and although I’m grateful for my degree, I couldn’t help but feel that quite a lot of it boring statistics and logistics. I echo your sentiments about html tables and font tags being taught to current students. I think the course is about ten years out of date and drastically needs to be modernised.