On Monday I attended the latest “Digital Future Debate“, one of a number of seminars looking at IT, Innovation and Entrepreneurial skills in young people, and its potential positive impact on Scottish businesses. 

Focusing on Education, the event gathered together a wide number of relevant parties including educators, policy makers, business owners and (most importantly!) young people.  Panel members included among others, Sunday Herald business editor - Colin Donald, Raymond O’Hare (Regional Director of Microsoft Scotland), Kirk Ramsay (Chief Executive of the Science Centre), Joe Wilson (SQA Business Manager) and David Kelly (one of our web hosting clients!)..

In summary, the event generated a lot of good discussion, including debate on the “graduate skills gap” topic that I recently blogged on, with a representative from University of the West of Scotland claiming to be fully aware of the “relevancy” issues surrounding the teaching of ICT and Technology within Education Institutions, and confirming their plans to change it with some rather radical (and greatly welcomed) different approaches to traditional teaching.  Colin Donaldson introduced the sessions with the question “Does business do enough to help education produce people with the required skills?”  I’d argue that the issue is the inverse…  Having knocked on a few educational doors over the years to see how we (as a small company operating on the “front line”) can help guide coursework etc, it’s clear that many in the traditional eductional world want to go it alone.

With regard technology in schools (primary and secondary), it was generally believed that even today, it’s the kids that are teaching the teachers, but there was some disagreement on whether online tools such as blogs, wikis, facebook and bebo, instant messaging etc were appropriate for the classroom.  Personally I welcome them – the kids are already using them outside school, and as Joe Wilson pointed out, by using a combination of all these online apps they are effectively building their own “personal learning environments”, in which the potential to “learn” is often far greater than in the traditional classroom environment.

All in all – it was actually quite positive, with the future of education and it’s digital input looking promising, but as with all of these focus groups and debates, we now need to act rather than keep talking a good game-plan.

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Following on from my earlier blog post about universities not teaching relevant web design skills, Opera and Yahoo apparently feel the same, and have come together to launch the Web Standards Curriculum.

It’s an entire standards-based web design course – free online to anyone, and covers HTML, CSS, Javascript and more. 

Well done to those concerned for taking the time to develop what is a great starting point for not only students (who can supplement their “formal” education, and teach themselves the right skills), but also teachers and businesses as well – able to use the resource to improve their current methods etc.  Let’s hope the universities and schools catch up quickly.

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Having recently interviewed a number of Graduates for a Web Development assistant position, my concerns over the formal teaching of web design in our Colleges and Universities have not exactly been alleviated.

While I’d fully expect to see some sort of “skills gap” between those candidates straight from university, and those with a little real-world experience, it is the size of that gap that continues to worry me.

I’d like to stress that all our recently graduated candidates were bright, intelligent and talented individuals, all with (or about to get) good degrees – they are not at fault – but I fear the institutions teaching them, and preparing them for a career in web design are letting them down.  

One or two actually hinted at being fully aware that what, and how they were taught was not “recent”, and that they knew they’d need to learn new skills immediately.  We had 1 guy interview who was entirely self taught, and said the only reason he did his university course was to get the bit of paper that  confirmed he could do it.  He then went on to say that he was actually worried that during the 3 years formal education he might actually “un-learn” all his good habits with the bad habits he was being shown.  By bad habits he was referring to things like table-based layouts, ignorance of semantic markup, and lack of standards or css.  All quite worrying stuff…

I recently did a lecture to the School of Computing and Creative Technologies within the University of Abertay, Dundee, to an audience of Computer Arts and Web Design Students.  At the time I was really encouraged by the enthusiasm and feedback from the lecture hall, which later spilled out into the café – the majority were genuinely interested, asked some great questions, and left me with a positive outlook on web design (and technology) education.  So clearly the passion is there, I just hope it’s backed up by the teaching of relevant skills. 

Personally – if I were a student considering my options for web design and development at University or College, I’d be damn keen to interview them – not the other way around.  Challenge their bold statements on their websites about “web standards” and “advanced web authoring” and get down to the detail about what you’re actually going to teach me.  Show me a <TABLE> and I’m gone.

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Yesterday’s news that McDonalds have been granted the right to offer academic qualifications to their staff, equivalent to the likes of traditional GCSE or A-Level, has resulted in a lot of press, and public opinion.

I’m guessing that the “controversy” (as some see it) would have been non-existent if the company in question was anybody other than the fast food giant.  After all… 2 other companies were granted the same status – FlyBE and Network Rail, yet their involvement has largely remained out of the “cheesy” headlines.

Look beyond the stereotypical attitude of cholesterol boosting burgers, a greasy environment and low-paid spotty students, and McDonalds is actually a business model that many other companies would do well to replicate.  Especially in the area of staff training and standards.

And why do I believe this?  Well -I’ve worked there.  Ok – I only lasted 3 weeks, and never progressed past the McChicken Sandwich station, but in that short time, I took (and passed!) 2 exams that ensured I knew every possible fact about how to cook a chicken burger from how long to leave it on the grill, to the exact weight in grams of the lettuce that topped it.  Overkill?  - maybe…  but how many other companies ensure their staff are trained to such details, and enforce formal examinations to prove it.  In the 16 years since I worked there, I’ve personally not seen anything like it.

Don’t get me wrong….  Customer service (one of the qualifications they will be awarding) at Macca D’s is far from perfect – but in the UK in general Customer service sucks.  Especially in the hospitality and service industry – we simply fall far behind customer service levels, where such jobs are often seen as a stepping stone or time-filler, where often the person serving you doesn’t give a s**t about you or the company he/she is representing – after all they don’t want to be waiting tables or serving you a Burger and fries all their life, so why spend the effort – it’s just a means to an end.  Go further afield to Europe, or indeed the USA, and you’ll see the same staff with a different attitude.  While the American “have a nice day now!” might feel a little condescending, in general they do tend to mean it. 

At NSDesign we focus on Customer Service more than any other aspect – knowing that in our case, it’s the “people” behind the technology that makes the difference.  Far too often – the people representing the company ruin an otherwise solid reputation, and I congratulate McDonalds (and indeed FlyBE and Network Rail) for striving to improve things on a company, and ultimately a national level.

Personally I welcome the idea of “on the job” qualifications, and have no problems with which companies are entitled to offer them, so long as (like McDonalds) they can prove a certain quality and commitment to ensuring the end result will be valid.  With so many youngsters simply not getting enough from traditional schooling, what better place to offer a potential future than the stepping-stone job positions so many of them end up in.

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