Two of the important members of the WaSP Education Task force who have been hard at work on the WaSP Curriculum Framework (WCF) were featured in this week’s issue of A List Apart.
Brighter Horizons for Web Education is by the WaSP Edu TF head Aarron Walter.
If you’ve interviewed candidates for positions in the web industry, you’ve probably heard firsthand the heartbreaking stories of recent graduates who are woefully unprepared to enter the workforce. When this happens, we usually respond by cursing the school that miseducated the applicant and return to our work, only to relive the experience with every new round of interviews.
No industry can sustain itself if it doesn’t master the art of cultivating new talent—an art that requires close ties between practitioners and educators. Passively watching education struggle to bridge the divide only contributes to the problem.
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In our ongoing fight to establish wide adoption of standards in our profession, those of us involved in The Web Standards Project have begun trying to tackle the education issue. Industry experts and veteran educators on the WaSP Education Task Force are currently working to develop the WaSP Curriculum Framework (WCF), a modular curriculum that can be used to improve existing curricula or serve as the foundation for emerging programs.
Aarron also describes similar programs from Opera, the Information Architecture Institute, IxDA, and Web Directions North.
Elevate Web Design at the University Level by Leslie Jensen-Inman.
About a year ago, I embarked on a journey to discover where we are in web education and where we need to go.
I interviewed thirty-two web design and development leaders. Each of them expressed interest in the formal education of the next generation of web professionals. Most emphasized a challenge common to higher education: technology moves too fast for curriculum to keep up with it.
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I understand these frustrations. We’re not preparing students and that has a lot to do with the educational bureaucracy and institutions. However, educators should have help shouldering the burden. In partnership, web educators and web professionals can be pioneers for change.
Leslie mentions a number of ways web professionals, businesses, and educators can work together for change.