Having posted my thoughts on university before, both the good and bad points I was in two minds with what to do over the summer as the end of the educational year and holidays approached and I wasn’t sure whether it was worth carrying on or trying to seek employment within the industry.
I’d become disillusioned with university over the last few months as I felt the course had stalled slightly and I wasn’t picking up as much as I wanted to and felt that a lot of the content we were being taught had little relevance to the industry. (We were still told that table based layouts were acceptable on occasion). As the year finished I was still swithering as to what to do and decided that I’d decide over the summer as there was no immediate rush to make my mind up as the course doesn’t re-start until September but circumstances speeded that process up.
After a hectic couple of weeks, between completing the university year and everything that’s associated with that, I was offered employment with MTC Media here in Dundee and I was delighted to accept. My role is the front end development of websites and implementing the HTML/CSS/JavaScript, as well as designing and after four weeks of employment I’m really enjoying it so far. I’ve learnt a lot in the short space of time in my employment, from the mechanics of how a design agency operates to more technical aspects of coding and designing solutions for clients. Whilst I’ve designed and implemented several websites in the past, it’s much different now that it is my main job role and in a design agency, and I’m really enjoying it so far.
My knowledge is increasing all the time and at a much faster rate than it would had I stayed in education and for that reason I feel I’ve made the right decision.
As some of you may know, I’m now in second year at university, and that was after spending some time at college prior to this. When I left school I didn’t know what I wanted to do for a career, and due to circumstances at the time I went to work full-time in an office for 3 years, although that quickly got boring. Having had an interest in computers and web design since I was at school, I decided to leave full-time employment in order to pursue a career in this field, and I can honestly say I have no regrets about this decision at all.
There’s always been a debate within the web industry about whether it’s better to gain a university education or to gain a job within the industry in order to build up a portfolio of work and experience. Having been at university for just over a year and gaining work experience at the same time, I can see both sides of the argument. Whilst I’m enjoying my time here, there are areas where the course could be significantly improved, with the latest set of modules described below:
Web Standards:
This module was essentially all about valid code and practices for accessibility and usability, all basic and essential things to know for any web designer/developer. I had a slight advantage for this module having known a lot of the areas discussed previously and knew all about the table layouts v CSS layouts and validators etc. However, it baffles me why this module wasn’t delivered in first year instead of the HTML module we had to endure with the tutor telling us that inline styles and table layouts were still ok to be used if we wanted.
MultMedia:
This module was all about Flash and ActionScript 2.0, which although useful and good to know it is not something that interests me at all and do not enjoy Flash work at all. The module is called Web MultiMedia but rarely ventures out of Flash and there is a lot more to multimedia on the web than that.
With the emergence of HTML 5 and the video and audio tags coming into effect within browsers, this could be a new era of multimedia embedded into sites but this has not been mentioned at all. The emergence of web apps such as Spotify etc have changed the way music is consumed on the web, and the Kindle has changed the book industry and popularised e-books.
Designing Interfaces:
This module was interesting and probably the highlight of the semester, with a lecturer who knew his subject and was passionate about it certainly helped. A lot of theory was introduced to the way that interfaces are designed and considerations were analysed in order to produce the most effective and attractive interface.
The highlight of the semester for me.
Law:
We had to endure a law module which was interesting, but too generic to really get me interested. The area of contract law is obviously essential to the industry as a key area is the relationship between client and designer and a good solid contract is key to this relationship. However, there was no mention of intellectual property or other law specific to computing and the internet which was a disappointment as this would have been more relevant and interesting.
The current semester has just started this week and new modules include Web Scripting, Marketing and Information Design which has the potential to be an improvement on the previous one. This post has turned into a bit of a rant about the failings of the course, and although it’s not all bad, I can see why people skip the university route and head straight for industry.
