Teaching Web Standards
If you were following the Teaching Web Design series here at this blog, you will remember that the INFO 130 course at Cornell teaches Web standards-based code. Towards my last weeks as a section instructor, one of my students asked me a very reasonable question. He told me that he had looked at a lot of websites since he started the course and he found that the majority of them were done with table layouts, not CSS. Therefore, he wondered why we taught them to use CSS to lay out their websites.
I admit the question caught me off guard, not because I did not know what to say, but because I just had not expected a question like that. I explained to the student that using tables for layout is an old and outdated method, and that CSS is the new technology for this. I explained that a knowledge of CSS would be valuable to them, and that CSS allows them to do more than they can do with tables.
It might surprise you, but this was the first time that a question like this had been addressed in my section. From the start of the course, it was simply: "here are the things that we will teach you. Older methods are outdated and will not be used." There was never a philosophical discussion about web standards and why they should be used. There was a lot of talk about accessibility, clean code, abstraction and device independence, but there was never any holy war or table-burning going on.
In my opinion, this is the right way to teach web standards. In short, we simply presented the tools and techniques to the students, and showed them what they would be capable of doing. It wasn't about doing things the ethical way, but doing them the best way. Many students were learning Web design for the first time. They had the privilege of learning the modern way to build websites from the start. By now, we have a class full of students who know, and to varying degrees understand, technologies that many seasoned web designers still have trouble learning. I think this is something to be proud of. The most important thing is that students have learned all of this simply by doing. We taught them web standards without the heated arguments and crap-throwing that go on between standardistas and, well, everyone else. The results speak volumes. Thus, I think it is clear that the key to spreading Web standards is through education, and that students are in a perfect position to learn to do things the best way. They just need the right teachers.
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I have to congratulate you on leading from the front! I haven't long been out of university and the only mention CSS got when I was there was that it was a way to color fonts! It's good to here that there are new generations of web designers emerging that will replace those to stubborn to change there ways and look forward. I would really like to see more universities and institutions adopting a similar approach, it would definitely help the development of the internet. But at the same time I think it would be a mistake to not cover some of the older technologies & techniques because I think you can actually learn a lot from the mistakes that have been made.
Anyhow I hope your students are grateful that you gave them a head start! - I wish i had been so lucky!
How many first time designers get to build a site from the bottom floor. I think they would be better off if they learned both sides of the subject. In the real world you don't let some kid just come in and change everthing because his teacher said this is how it should be done. They need to explain why something should be changed.
Dave, I don't know what your personal experiences are with the web industry, but from what I have seen, there are a lot of companies that would love to have fresh minds with a strong knowledge of web standards that can come in and rebuild their kludgy sites the right way. I'm not making it up either; these skills pay off.
If you want your students use and spread “Web Standardsâ€, this is conversation they are going to have at sometime. Why would not want to have an open forum with your students on this subject. You have lots of good information and I think they would benefit from your feedback. Maybe you don’t tackle this in the first week, but in the last few class.
I see what you are saying, but what I have seen from most students is that there is little interest in having philosophical discussions about the ethics and morals of web design. Students just want to learn how to do things and if you give them the right tools they can run with that and do some amazing work. It's not that discussion about web standards is not important, but the point is not to teach it as "standards," rather to teach them about important things like accessibility and semantics and explain to them how things like XHTML and CSS can be used to address them.
I for one wish I had had the opportunity to learn the current standards in the beginning rather than learning them while "unlearning" the old school methods.
I finished university in Melbourne, Australia three years ago now and there was no mention of web standards then. I only came across it when I read Jeffrey Zeldman's book Designing with Web Standards. I wish I had been given an insight on how websites should be built. I believe university is the perfect place for the promotion of best practices.
James: I don't really think it counts as 'promoting' web standards if there is no understanding. Further, this is really the difference between Uni and commercial courses - University should present both sides of any argument, otherwise when one of these kids hits the real world and is shown how much more control a table and a spacer gif gives you (especially cross-browser) then they are going to have no answer.
Mike: I'm sorry, I must have given you the impression that they don't teach both sides of the argument in INFO 130. They most certainly do. When the subject of tables for layout comes up, professors, instructors, TAs, etc. are very fair in giving the students all the information they need: "don't do it, you'll get an F."
Besides, all of the students are taught the semantics and accessibility problems that exist when tables are used for layout, so it's not like they won't have an answer in the "real world." And, they are Ivy League students with a working connection to the internet… one would hope they would be capable of both finding out on their own and teaching themselves how to use tables and spacer gifs easily. And, I'd say 1% of them will go into the business of designing websites after graduating… so what's the problem again?
Christian,
Your very first sentance makes it clear that you have not taught these students the relative merits of tables vs CSS. Maybe it was on the sylabus, but that student certainly did not get it!
Your final sentence is almost suicidally provocative by the way…