Comments on: Open University Web Design Course

By: Adam Wallace

Adam Wallace — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 11:20:21 +0000

Personally I have found the lynda.com courses to be very useful when it comes to home studying web design. The only drawback to lynda.com is the price of a subscription. Most of their stuff is [illegally] available via file-sharing if you truly are a struggling student. Just make sure when you start to earn you also start to pay!

abookapart.com have an excellent series of good value books dealing with HTML5 & CSS3. They focus on the essentials, in easy to follow language. Well worth a look at their site.

There is the Open College of the Arts, similar to the OU. Currently they are offering a graphic design course, but no web design. Traditionally the OU was very science/maths focussed, which might explain the poor quality of their web design course. Glad to know its not worth following, as I’m looking for something similar, having just completed a Level 3 City & Guilds in GD.

By: Ces

Ces — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 19:17:25 +0000

Hiya, I did the exact course in 2010, and I just thought I’d let you know that it’s not changed one bit!

However, they ARE taking it down within this year because it’s becoming extremely outdated. Hurrah!

By: Derek Pennycook

Derek Pennycook — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 08:49:16 +0000

I remember doing a dreamweaver course at college and did find it useful but have to agree about the open university one. I found very little relevance in it and in hindisght have found little use for it today.

By: LMac

LMac — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 17:32:06 +0000

Anyone have any opinions about Shillington College?

By: jc

jc — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 18:11:10 +0000

I will suggest lynda.com. It helped me get a leg in onto Dreamweaver, Xhtmls, Css and PHP. After you get the basics, you can go further with some reference volumes for each and also from web coders blogs.

It’s worked great for me.

By: ginnie barnet

ginnie barnet — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 18:45:17 +0000

I have also been looking for some class on web design. I, too, checked out the local community colleges, etc. and there is nothing. I then checked out some online courses, but none looked great. One wanted to send someone to my house. Don’t think so. Is there any good online course out there?

By: Trevor Collins

Trevor Collins — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 22:35:09 +0000

Sorry to hear you were not happy with the course. Not that I am surprised though, I quite often fined this on courses that I am roped into.

By: James

James — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 21:44:01 +0000

Hey, I’m currently studying the CIW (Certified Internet Webmaster) course at the University of the West of Scotland – in Paisley just outside Glasgow – and the course, books which are included in the course fee and tutoring is awesome. It’s a distance learning course (online), but the tutors and other students are available to chat about stuff anytime. Really worth checking out – honestly. Jamessy

By: fab4

fab4 — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 17:21:26 +0000

Many of the CBT courses are excellent. I will usually have a 2 monitor system and watch the CBT on the one monitor and practice what they are telling me on the other one!

By: Wigglyblob

Wigglyblob — Tue, 20 May 2008 14:04:10 +0000

Hi Ricky,

I don’t know how far you’ve got with researching courses and training, but if you live in London (and maybe you don’t…) there is a small independant college right in the heart of town that offers a few FULL scholarships in the BTEC Foundation in Fine Art. The course is for a year, and can be tailored to cover web design, Photoshop, Illustrator, digital photography, graphic design and Flash animation. The course is generally considered pre-degree level and could well be used to complement home learning from a book on the more technical side of computer languages and web development. If you want to check it out the college is called Blakes at http://www.blake.ac.uk

Alternatively, in London again, the Metropolitan University offer a string of really useful (mostly degree-level) courses in multimedia and web design/development. The advantage of the Met is that you can do most of the courses part-time and (I think) pay in installments. I’m sure they also offer various scholarships and bursaries. Otherwise, you might be able to apply for a career development loan.