I think it's a 50/50 balance. Students are enticed to enroll in college to "further their career" or "start a new career" more often than any other reason (publicly communicated). That implies a primary focus on career-oriented curriculum, skills, etc.
That said, it should imperative that curriculum do no less than prepare someone to meet the requirements of the field they are pursuing "in general". It's not realistic to expect every single web development class to equally cover every tool/technology/approach (JSP/ASP/PHP,AJAX,Flash,mySQL,Oracle,SQL,etc etc,etc) Specialty courses will always be needed for that. The obvious end result is that in most modern fields (career studies), the notion of a "four year degree" is gone. It will now take longer to gain a meaningful degree with relevant skills learned.
They already teach Photoshop in photo classes, InDesign in a design class. Are they basing their curriculum on that online skills study that came out and mentioned HTML and Photoshop as the things online news workers use all day long?
That's called playing catch-up instead of innovating.
Boo. Hiss.
We struggled with this at UCD.
I think universities should separate vocational training from education. There's nothing wrong with offering vocational training, just keep it away from the degree programs.
As an alumni of a UK university I believe higher education is about learning to learn - my course covered a lot of topics high level - including programming etc...but overall I didn't need to know half the stuff, but simply have the knowledge to enable me to learn it as and when...principles, not specifics.
How would this course do as an elective later in the curriculum? I note it is a 100 level course. Could it survive as a 200 or 300 level course? That might be the solution as there would be less pressure to cover specific required topics.
BTW, I'm making this observation based on my experience at my U. YMMV.
I think that it should be more focused on new media, along with some old media thrown in. If you are going to be doing podcasting you can create a simple website that is just an image made in Photoshop and then have a link to get the podcast. The class could make a brochure, flyer, or poster advertising the podcast and post them around the campus.
I am a 16 year old blogger and designer. I just created a class of my own where I am starting a video and podcast website for my school. I found you through Scoble. Wish I could come eat some pizza with you. Good luck with the class and check out my blog.
I am a colleague of Steve Sloan's at SJSU. I have a class of 73 students in a course called Media and Society, and they've been blogging for me all semester. There was no formal training in "blogging software" given to them. I pointed them in the direction of free blogging programs, gave them some basics for getting started, then told them to have their first blog post (on the topic, "What Kind of media consumer am I?") published by the end of the second week of classes, and to email me the URL of their blog.
Sure, there were a few weeks of growing pains. That was an important point of the assignment. But once they got going the point of their blogs was to train them to write critically about the media. We do not navel-gaze at the technology in this class, and we don't spend any in-class time discussing how to format your blog. We discuss, instead, how to handle spam and other unwelcome comments; the importance of providing context through linking; what sorts of things are worthy of writing about (and what are not); how to express a credible opinion on the media; and whether bloggers should sell advertising.
I could tell you my opinion of teaching software in a university-level course, but that opinion plus $3.75 will get you a latte at Starbucks, so instead I've asked my students to express their opinions about the issue.
And if I've done my job this semester, they will.
Steve,
I'm a senior studying Economics at Eastern Illinois University. I've been doing web design/development for about 4 years, but I've really slowed things down while in school. I've taken graphics courses, programming, and talked to a lot of friends that are CIS or Graphic Design majors.
The ones who are decently prepared are the ones who have practiced and paid attention to whats out there. You seem to have a pretty popular blog and know the industry well; that's why anyone who has a clue would sign up for the class. Teach the stuff that can't be bought for 29.95 in Blogging for Dummies or Adobe CS2 at a glance.
BTW...CS2 belongs in a workshop not a class. I hope the university/department offers weekly workshops instead of trying to cover it all in one semester. If they want to compete with vocational training, then offer workshops.
Hi Steve,
I am one of Lilly's students in her MCom 72 class, I am also in Dr. Cheers' MCom 70 (Visual Communications). I will admit, at the beginning of the semester in both of these classes I was thrown into the deep end. In Lilly's class we were required to create a blog, which I had never even heard of before. And in Dr. Cheers' class we have been required to use several Adobe programs all semester.
In both classes we were simply given the assignment, basic directions and told to have at it. I hated it--in the beginning. But honestly I have learned a lot. Students, although they may not be happy with it, learn best by doing hands on work. My blog may not be the best in the world, but I have one. My posters may not be the best, but I now know how to use Adobe Creative Suite.
It would have been nice to have someone teach me how to use Blogger and Adobe, but would I have paid attention?
The honest truth, absolutely not!!!
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