Is this web development course well rounded?

[blueberryrain]

The college I've enrolled with is offering this for their web design/development course:

• Exploring Web Site Design Methodology.
• Basic Design Concepts.
• Page Layout and Design.
• Site Navigation.
• Graphics.
• Multimedia.
• The Development Process.
• Understanding Web Site Design Technology.
• HTML Standards and Compliance.
• HTML Tables and Page Structure.
• HTML Frames and Site Design.
• Metadata in HTML.
• Cascading Style Sheets.
• Plug-Ins and Downloadable Files.
• Using Web Site Development Tools.
• Microsoft FrontPage 2000.
• Macromedia Dreamweaver
• Allaire HomeSite
• Macromedia Flash 5.0 and Dynamic Media.
• Applying Advanced Design Technology.
• JavaScript and Client-Side Web Scripting.
• Java Applets in Web Pages.
• Extensible Markup Language and Authoring.
• HTTP Servers and Cookies.
• Web Site Publishing and Database Technology.

Please give me your opinion on this. The tuition is 4 classes a week, of 3 hours duration each. And this is for 6 weeks.

Is this enough?

[Jeff Mott]

Enough? I'd say too much. You'll get a brief glimpse at almost two dozen different concepts, technologies and software packages, but you won't spend enough time with any one of them to learn to use it well. All you'll end up doing is memorizing and regurgitating definitions that don't make sense yet.

[LeeU]

I have to agree with Jeff. That's great if you just want to know what your Web development department is doing but for someone who wants to do it for a living, each of those should be a minimum of a one semester course, preferably two semesters, and some even longer.

[stacywacy]

I took a web development course during one of my last quarters at college and they covered many topics, the quarters are 11 weeks in length, and the 11th week is for finals. But, the professor told us during the first week of class that we're not going to learn any of the many languages in-depth because some of them require more time spent than is available and would take many quarters to fully learn, but we will have at least a starting point in basic concepts and will be able to develop from there either on our own or by taking other classes that focus on that language. We had to build a fully functional e-commerce site as our class project.

By studying that many languages you're not going to learn them in-depth but most likely only the basic concepts. You might want to see if its worth it to take some classes that are dedicated to any one topic, such as html/css, Java, javascript, Photoshop, or whatever.

I have to say my (former) university is on an 11 week quarter system and we wouldn't be able to really cover more than basic concepts and probably wouldn't be able to get through all of those topics in 11 weeks - your class only lasts for 6 weeks...
.

[trepidity]

Ditto on Jeff's comment as well. This is probably an intro course on front-end development. Is that the case? Because if so I would expect to get just a breif understanding of what these concepts entail. If you have never developed client-side portions of web sites I would expect to be able to go to work and do them after completing this course. Some of those topics should be either their own course, or at least grouped in with others if your on a quarter schedule. Thats about a year or two of courses to be able to actually go into the real work world and be able to do everything listed, especially if your coming in knowing nothing. My college was semester based, but we usually had an intro course like this first semester, then later we had whole courses that built of one another to get into depth on each subject. This also means it should be an easy course;) lol

[Cstick]

Seems to me like it's enough to get your feet wet and help you decide where you'd like to focus your efforts. Though, I'm surprised there isn't at least one item about server side development.

Unless you're attending a school for arts, I highly doubt there are courses focused on every one of these items or even 1/2 for that matter. Typical 4 year universities might offer a course on human interaction and design, and probably less that a handfull of other webdev courses that aren't part of the normal rotation.

All that in 6 weeks seems too intense though, a normal 16 week semester seems more appropriate.