Web design courses

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Hi,

As some of you may have seen from my message on the intro board I am looking for advice on the options for doing a distance learning course in web design.

The course is for my OH, who currently does not have access to a pc (I access from work). He recently had an interview with Computeach about doing the CIW web design course they offer. It sounded great when the salesman gave his spiel, however on looking around the internet it appears they have a less than brilliant reputation.

Anyway, before we go ahead and potentially waste a fortune I was hoping for some insights in to how others have completed this type of course. Has anyone done one through Open University? Has anyone got anything good to say about Computeach?

Any advice/suggestions greatly appreciated,
Ilona

 

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Come on Guys - lady in search of advice here ....

 

Hi Ilona,

I can't really comment on web design courses available because I've never done them. One thing you don't mention is what experience your OH has with computers / web design. One thing he could try before throwing large sums of money at distance learning providers is check with a local college to see if they run courses in web design, I know the one near me does evening classes on a whole range of computer subjects including Cisco.

Another thing it would be worth checking is the availability of jobs in your area, specifically those your OH could apply for once he has the qualification. A good place to check this would be the IT Job websites, I've no real idea what the web developers job market is like at the moment.

Hope this may have been some help
Phil

 

From what I gather if your going to go into the Web arena your better off knowing a specialised subjust such as Java, php/SQL, Pearl as regular HTML designer are flooding the market and the jobs are few and far between.

 

Thanks guys.

Phil - to answer your questions, he has had a fair bit of experience with computers, and used to work both on a helpdesk and in training. The helpdesk ranged from telling people that left clicking the mouse does not mean putting the mouse in your left hand to click the button to more in depth stuff (not sure exactly what, I mostly just laughed at the stories!). Anyway, he's failry computer savvy.

With regards to jobs, although I don;t think he has really checked out the jobs in the area, we can be fairly mobile - having said that, I had always assumed that something like web design could be done from pretty much anywhere - is that not the case? The Computeach rep who came round made out that there were loads of jobs and that they put 98% of their students straight into employment through their network of companies. Needless to say we took that with a pinch of salt at the time, and having had a look at people's comments it would now seem that it should be taken even less seriously.

SimonV - the course that he was looking at seemed to cover a wide range of areas, such as Java, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Frontpage etc.... Or am I getting the software confused with the language? (If that makes sense? )

Anyway, thanks for your advice so far - please keep it coming, it is all useful!
Ilona

 

Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Frontpage are some of the WYSIWYG editors available on the market used to make HTML creation simple. You can get hold of plenty of books from a local library to learn these subjects so I personally wouldnt pay a training provider when you can pick the materials up at a very big snip of the price or even free.

 

SimonV - thanks. Any pointers for where i can go to learn more about what exactly Java etc are - I though SQL was something to do with databases?

 

There are plent of free resources on the net, I'm not sure as to the direction to point you but try google http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=learn+Java&meta=

SQL yes is something to do with databases and more and more larger websites are database driven, this site is mostly database driven with PHP as the markup language.