First Modern Web Design Course in Saudi Arabia
A few months ago, i tried to find a modern web design course (semantic HTML and CSS), but unfortunately i found none. Even the leading training center, New Horizons, did not seem to offer anything related (their HTML documents’ source code use two ‘html’, ‘head’ and ‘body’ tags. So you can figure that out without asking them).
So by the end of the year 2005, i planned to offer such course myself. I wrote an outline of the course, the ‘what’, ‘when’, ‘where’, ‘why’ and ‘how’ in a proposal , and started thinking of someone who’s willing to give me a chance. The first place i thought of was my previous high-school. I went there and talked to the head manager, who ,thankfully, helped me to start the course much earlier than i thought.
I started teaching the course last tuesday with 10 interested students. Even though i taught only 3 hours so far, but that gave me a clear idea how difficult teaching is. You should be really patient and work hard to make things as easy (and as clear) as possible. You don’t really appreciate your teachers until you get to teach. The worst part is that i’m doing it for free since it’s my first time. Plus i have to make sure that the order and nature of topics introduced in this course suits beginners.
Here’s a quick summary of the course’s topics in order (not final yet) :
- Introduction.
- Firefox and it’s helpful extensions.
- HTML basics.
- CSS Basics.
- CSS box model.
- Cross-browser compatibility.
- Laying out pages using CSS.
- Cross-resolution compatibility.
- Semantic logic. (which focuses on how to completley seperate the structure from the layout)
- CSS anthology (selected topics).
- Web Design Anthology. (how modern websites are supposed to be)
- Code Validation.
- Testing and Optimazing layouts.
- Appendix : Server Side Includes.
The order of topics will most likely change the next time i teach the course (if i teach it that is).
The best part is that the school’s authorized training center will give approved certificates to those who pass the course. So this is going to be the first modern web design certificate in my country (as far as i know). I hope the rest of the course goes well. 
Salaam Mashhoor,
I’m posting this comment exactly a year since you wrote it… very spooky…
I was searching for a solution in the Sitepoint forum to an AJAX problem I was facing, and ended up in your blog.
I was actually thinking of starting a training course on Standards-compliant web development, and so was *very* interested to see this post…
I currently work in Kuwait University, and although I wasn’t part of the web development team, when I saw the HTML code for the site, I thought it was a crime not to help out! (like you said, a number of body tags, and table and font tags all over the place)…
So how did your teaching experience go? And why didn’t you offer to teach at New Horizons from the start? I’m thinking of doing my first course at the university, to the web design team, and then speak to New Horizons on doing a course for them…
Also, regarding the course topics you covered, I would suggest that Firefox extensions be covered later on, when browsers are discussed. After the introduction, I would suggest that you cover what the Semantic Web means, and what the advantages of standards compliant coding are, and what the alternatives are ( and tags, etc).
There’s a lot to cover in such a course, and I’d love to hear from your own experience…
Salam Haider,
Very spooky indeed.
My teaching experience was just OK, although my students said I did very well.
The course started with 10 participants - all of them left it at except for 4. Those 7 who left did it because they expected to use a WYSIWYG editor of some sort, but I disappointed them. So I’d say the most important thing is to clarify to whoever you’re going to teach the nature of your course beforehand (something that I’ve missed).
The reason I covered Firefox extensions earlier is because I needed them to use these extensions throughout the course to speed up their work and make it easier; and help them visualize the whole process (web developer tool bar, measureIt, colorzilla..etc).
Regarding New Horizons, I didn’t do it there mainly because I have no experience in training before. I needed to see how good I’d preform, and I couldn’t find a better option than offering it for students for free. You can’t complain about anything that you get for free.
I admit the outline of the course wasn’t well structured (although it did work), and I will perform a plenty of revisions in my next course (some day) now that I know more about the way beginners think.
I wish you good luck with the course you’re planning to give.
Salaam Mashhoor,
The expectation to use WYSIWYG editors is a point I totally missed! I just thought of highlighting the nightmares that come with such editors, and not that the students would expect to use them :S
Btw, there’s a Sitepoint book on using Dreamweaver 8 for building standards-compliant code, which might come in handy for an editor-based course…
Out of interest, have you tried out Sitepoint’s Editize? I would like to introduce a CMS here at work, but haven’t gotten round to checking if Editize is a good option. However, I would expect it to complement a standard-compliant website (which I’m aiming to establish here)…
All the best, and we’ll keep in touch, insha’Allah…
Haider
p.s. I’ll be working on my first web app this year, so will let you know how that goes as well!!