Comparison of BTEC and Skillset Standards

After spending the past few weeks looking at the National Occupational Standards it is clear that the differences between the 'industry professionals' and BTEC's standards are vast.

Before making any sort of comparison I feel it is important to firstly look at who is writing the Skillset standards. The majority of contributors are part of large companies (e.g Sky and Channel 4) and so perhaps their view of the industry and it's needs are somewhat distorted.

This is perhaps most obviously seen in IM11 which doesn't state 'designer' as a job role which would require you to know about copyright laws and intellectual property rights. This is most likely down to the fact that these big companies have huge in house design teams where as smaller companies with much smaller design teams can't afford to have so many different roles. A scenario which me are much more likely to face.

However BTEC are not perfect in their standards either, not by a long way. Due to the large amount of time since it's last update the BTEC syllabus is very outdated and in such a fast moving industry where the only real way to keep 'up to date' on goings on in is by using the Internet, a syllabus last updated 2 years ago (and most likely very minor changes at that) much of it is very, very dated.

The BTEC syllabus is also very long - 198 pages - which could be easily condensed. The reason that the BTEC syllabus is so long in comparison to the Skillset standards is mainly down to the fact that BTEC is purely academic and so means that certain goals and time frames should be set.

This brings up the question as to why Skillset does not include such measures in it's syllabus. This is Skillset's major let down, the fact that although they state what we are expected to know (or at least have an awareness of) they do not say as to what exact level (goals) or when we are expected to have learnt it by (time frames).

If Skillset were to implement these measures, especially some more specific goals, then it would give an even greater advantage to both educators and students than it currently does.

The big thing that needs to be looked at in both syllabuses (or syllabi dependent on your point of view) is the actual content that we 'must' learn. Obviously the Skillset standards are much less compulsory than BTEC's but never the less should be taken into consideration by educational institutes.

When comparing the two, the thing that jumps out at me the most is the technical aspect of the industry. BTEC offer very little in terms of technical units. Even learning something as valuable (and industry standard no matter where you work - almost) as CSS isn't compulsory so I suppose that a distinct lack of PHP, MySQL and databases is nothing to be shocked at.

Skillset on the other hand have a whole unit dedicated to coding scripts to 'provide functionality to interactive media products'.

BTEC of course faces a problem of it's own. Having to maintain an academic element to it's syllabus BTEC has to divide it's units between academic units as well as personal development work. This means that a lot of the units that Skillset recommend are unable to be implemented into the BTEC syllabus due to time been taken up by essays and such.

In an ideal world Skillset and BTEC would get together and come up with some sort of syllabus which took points from both syllabuses (again or syllabi) and made an academic/industry relevant one. But I can't see that day ever happening.

As it is, it is down to us (as students) to look at the skillset syllabus, decide what is relevent, and try and learn some of it ourselves in our own time instead of expecting everything to be given straight to us.

Why Blue-Green Is The Best Colour Combination

Blue and green are very natural colours. Green is of course the colour of plants and blue is of course the colour of the sky. If you look at a picture of the globe from space the most predominant colours you will see are also blue and green. Both colours are all around us and by using these colours in design it gives a much more natural look to your product be it a website or printed piece of work.

The blue-green combo is a valuable colour combination to use, and to ignore it would be a foolish mistake.

Of course if my word, and the powers of nature aren't enough to swing things for you, perhaps some industry professionals may change your mind. In a book published by Jakob Nielsen entitled 'Designing Web Usability' the front page of the book uses a blue and green colour scheme (see below)





As well as this Microsoft also use blue and green quite a lot in their programs. For starters the task bar on a XP PC has a green start button and the rest of the taskbar is blue. As well as this Windows Live messenger uses a blue 'buddy' and a green 'buddy'.



So with so many big companies using the blue-green combo, and with nature adopting it's own colour combination of the two, to turn down the use of blue and green seems quite a stupid thing to do,

It is the definative colour combination.

Yorkshire Sculpture Park Visit

Today we visited the Yorkshire Sculpture Park and once again I began to wonder if we were artists or designers. Visiting a sculpture park seemed to suggest we were in fact 'artists' but my complete lack of understanding of any of the 'art' or sculptures at the park proved the fact I was a obviously a designer (or perhaps maybe just a very bad artist).

Walking for 2.5KM to visit a gallery with various pieces of work called 'sheep shit snowball' (literally) seemed to me to be a waste of time, and as the main galleries wouldn't allow for photographs to be taken inside them we decided to take our own pictures on the long trek back. I'll upload them soon.

After spending a just over an hour in the park our creative side began to come out however and we tried to create some of our own 'artwork'. This began simply with Craig and Scott kicking leaves to create lines in them showing the grass beneath. Though this sounds nothing special, neither does a wooden hut or a sculpture of a man when that is all that's said about it.

We then got the idea to create our own 'leaf angel' and as no one wanted to get dirty I decided to be the one to do it. Although it didn't turn out as well as planned, the idea was definitely there. Scott and Craig took some photos of it so hopefully they will post some on their blogs or send them to me to upload.

We then began messing around with our cameras, burying them in leaves, setting the timer and throwing them between us and spinning them around again whilst on timer. These pictures created some quite unique shots which do actually look quite good and could possibly be used for various design pieces (hopefully over the next few weeks)

We also began using our shadows to create pictures including us standing behind each other to make it just look like one person, and us basically being stupid sticking our arms out in weird ways and taking photos. Again these worked out quite well and again hopefully Craig and Scott will upload some of their pictures soon, as will I.

In the end I was thoroughly enjoying myself in the park, more so than on any of my previous visits, and was quite disappointed that we had to be back at college and would of happily continued to spend time in the park just being creative. As Scott quite rightly said 'It sometimes takes hours to be creative, it can take just a simple thing to set you off.

Oh, and I still don't understand the big fuss about the sky space sculpture - after my third time of viewing it.

All Your Sheep Belong To Us...

With the mass telling off we received last week regarding our communication skills we were then told we had to conform to the following WAI (Web Accessibility Initiative) Guidelines - 1.1, 2.2, 4.2, 13.1, 14.1 and 14.3.

I thought I was hitting most of these guidelines, perhaps 1.1 needed a little work, and 14.1 is a mine field, but on the whole I was relatively happy with my 'learning journal'. I spell check it before posting, have the date and time set up for posts, have added a list to the first years journals, and have meaningful titles.... Or do I?

As Craig mentioned in my previous post my idea of a 'meaningful title' is perhaps different to the user. Using my previous post as an example, my title of "Somewhere A Clock Is Ticking" tells the user nothing about what is to come in the blog, and to the average Joe reading my blog will cause little or no interest in them. Although I know what I was getting at, perhaps no one else really did.

Take the title of this blog for instance, to the average Joe this title will have as much meaning to this post as any of my other titles, yet to me it has a lot less meaning. I guess the point I'm trying to get at is that one of the main aims of our 'learning journals' is to provide evidence for our PDP unit which in turn is to show our understanding of the industry, jobs, etc. This being said, I need to start thinking about the end user a lot more and how everything I do, even minute things such as blog post titles, may affect them.

You know, it's amazing how much you learn when it's meant to be your week off...

Second Time Lucky

After my abysmal attempt in my first set of interview questions I decided to take a different approach. Instead of sitting and thinking about my answers I decided to think how I would react if I was asked a question I hadn't prepared for and answered from the top of my head.

I think in some ways this worked well, I answered much better than in my previous interview questions but perhaps this was because I had a preset question and answer list in my mind which I answered from. Perhaps by using this preset list it didn't give me a chance to get my personality across which is something that employers are often looking for.

Although I feel that this set of questions was much better than my previous, I don't feel like either is perfect and a lot of work would still have to be done. Of course hopefully my portfolio would be enough to put me through though it would be wrong to rely solely on this.

Second Interview Call Backs

Describe yourself in three words.
Enthusiastic, passionate, creative

How would you measure the effectiveness of your Interactive Media products?
I currently use an analysis tool called 'Google Analytics' to monitor my portfolio and online learning journal sites. It gives me a break down of who is accessing my website, where from, and other vital pieces of information such as browsers used etc.

By using this free tool it shows whether people are looking at my site and if they are coming back, personally I think that if users are repeat visiting my site then it is being effective. It also allows me to set measurable goals which are then recorded on the stats page again showing if it has been 'effective'.

How do you handle criticism?
Upon receiving criticism I first try and take any positives out of it and remember them for later as more often than not when receiving criticism you are giving positive feedback too. I then look at the negatives and try and see why others may think this and if on closer inspection of my work I can too see it. If I can't see the problem I then ask for more specific feedback on the negative points and ask what would make it better so that I can make the current work better and also again remember for a later date.

Explain when you have had a difficult problem and how you solved it.
The most recent problem I have faced is when trying to learn CSS on my course. I have had very little knowledge of it in the past and so could see I was going to struggle to learn it. For this reason I decided to take upon myself to learn CSS in my own time outside of college and as I knew CSS would have to be learnt, try and learn a few of the basics before I had to implement it. I used various sources to learn CSS including books, magazines and websites. I then practiced making a few basic CSS sites so I could get a hang of coding with it instead of just reading example code.1

Describe how you fit into a team.
I think personally I fit in to a team relatively easily. I am able to get on with people easily and have no problems joining a new group of people and begin getting on with them quickly. At the same time however I am able to distance myself from a group environment when the time calls to do individual work and don't have to rely on colleagues.

Are there any questions?
Will there be any opportunities for promotion?

'Don't Call Us....We'll Call You'

After last weeks 'Online Journal Entry' it is clear that if I were ever to apply for a real job I would be turned away almost immediately. Admittedly I did mistake the entry last week to be applying for a job via a letter not interview questions but it still doesn't account for the frankly abysmal answers I gave.

This may seem over critical but in my opinion is a honest response and would not like to hire myself after those answers.

Take my first question response for example. Although I have mentioned the job contains 'skills I have learnt on the course' I do not give examples as to what skills I have learnt and any other skills which I have learnt which may also aid me in the work.

Perhaps my worst answer however is the 'Where do you see yourself in 5 years time?' question. As Steve quite rightly mentioned in class, I have not shown loyalty to the business, although this was my intention. After hearing this question before I know it is important to show that you want to be with the company in the long run, even if this is not the truth, and by saying I wanted to be lead designer I was hoping to show both loyalty and ambition. However instead of saying 'I would like to be lead designer at your company', instead I said 'with a company', showing no loyalty at all.

If/when we do any more tasks like this, and definitely when I enter a real interview situation, I will think a lot harder about the answers I am giving and the way in which I am phrasing them.

Junior Web Developer

Company - Netstep Corporate Communications Ltd
Salary - £18000
Job Type - Permanent
Location - Yorkshire
Reference - NET14

Contact - Carla Marshall
Address - The Spire, Leeds Road, Lightcliffe, Halifax, West Yorkshire, HX3 8NU
Telephone - 01422 200308
Fax - 01422 200306

Found at - CreativeMatch.co.uk

Why Do You Want the Job?
After just completing 2 years on a HND Interactive Media course, I am now ready to begin work in the web design industry. The above job contains aspects of all the skills which I have learnt over the past 2 years and will give my a chance to further improve on my skills.

What's Your Greatest Strength?
In my opinion my greatest strength would be my ability to learn new things quickly. Whilst studying for my HND, I spent a lot of time learning new technologies on my own initiative, some of which were not taught on the course (such as PHP and MySQL).

What's Your Greatest Weakness?
My greatest weakness however would have to be my tendency to want to jump straight in to creating a website before I design it properly. However, in the industry I know that time is money and I would not have much 'design' time and so being able to design 'on the fly' could also be seen as a strength.

What Do You See Yourself Doing In 5 Years Time?
In five years time I hope to of progressed in my career and be, or at least be working my way towards being, a lead designer of a company. I feel that after 2 years of intense study followed by a numerous years of industry experience will provide me with enough advanced skills and knowledge to allow me to do this.

What Current Interactive Media Innovation Excites You The Most?
The current Interactive Media innovation which excites me the most at present is CSS, there is so much that can be done with it and the benefits of it are almost endless. I have only being studying CSS for a year but have made great strides in my ability to implement it in a effective manner and hope that this can only continue to improve.

Who Is Your Hero?
My 'hero' would have to be a graffiti artist called Banksy. Most 'graffiti artists' are just kids with spray cans writing their names on walls, but Banksy moves away from this and creates pieces of art work. His designs are both abstract but appealing at the same time, and a lot of the time he uses his 'art' to great effect when trying to get messages across, be this political, environmental, etc.

Key Points from the Design Mechanics Presentation

An online portfolio should include evidence of both commercial print and web work as employers look more at skills than qualifications. Approaches to potential employers should include a written CV, both posted and emailed and followed up by a phone call to confirm receipt. Good design practice involves preparing my self mentally for knock backs from clients and design for them and not my self. This is helped by gathering detailed information from the client brief which allows for accurate designs first time.

"We Still Blog The Old Way"

After the past few weeks of 'themed' blogs I am glad to finally get the chance to write a weekly evaluative blog like in the first year.

The first week kicked off with a slightly strange start as the first 'day' back at college after the holidays was to give a presentation to the first years. A voluntary presentation? What was I thinking. Luckily however it all seemed to go ok, despite me both forgetting a drink and being asked some very in depth and intelligent questions. Of course there was also no getting away from the question - Mac or PC?

However with this presentation out of the way, it was time to concentrate on the second year and the upcoming CSS and professional projects. Thursday was a very hard day as unlike the first year we weren't gently eased into the work load. Instead, as soon as we had received our new student ID cards, we were straight into a lecture regarding our first assignment.

The 'Box Clever' assignment sounds quite fun. It is very similar to the CSS Zen Garden website where we have to create our own style sheets for a given HTML 'template'. Although my knowledge of CSS is very limited, I am hoping that this assignment will advance my skills dramatically but at the same time it is quite a creative assignment which is always a good thing.

The big assignment of the year so far is the 'On the Job' assignment. Although techincally the iMe assignment is the longest, I feel that this assignment will be the most beneficial and make us work the hardest.

This has shown already, as only three weeks in to the second year and already I have being investigating setting up my own content management system and attempting to get my head around PHP and MySQL. This caused mass headaches for the first week but I now seem to be getting the hang of it, and with the help of Craig's books he has lent me will hopefully improve even further.

Regarding the assignment, tomorrow is our first meeting with the client and I am the 'official' minute taker of our 'company' which requires me to get dressed up. Laughs all round tomorrow then.

So far this year, one thing that I think has improved already is my time planning skills. I have managed to do my time plans at the beginning of each week, and keep them up to date throughout. This will be a massive help not only for me to plan the assignments better, but will also hopefully help in me achieving higher grades.

My aims for the next week are to:
Complete my designs for the Box Clever assignment

• Learn some more CSS
• Learn some more PHP/MySQL
• Complete any other tasks given by Craig B for the On the Job assignment
• Learn to speak in a less 'conversational manner' and a more 'academic manner'...maybe

If I can complete all these by next week then I will still be on track with my 'master time plan' for the assignments.

So Many Skills, So Little Time.

Over the past year we have learnt many things, all of which are linked to the industry. There have been times when I, and probably some others, may have felt that what we were learning at the time had no real point, but in the end it always makes sense.

Personal development planning is one of these such examples. On first glance PDP's sound a little too academic but the more I think about them the more sense it seems to make. The skills I have learnt from doing PDP exercises are vast. When I first started the course my knowledge of web design was very limited, and I had no real experience in any of the software we would be learning. This soon changed though as I soon grasped the concept of the software and learnt the many features of the various ones.

This is perhaps the most obvious task we have being given that is linked directly to the industry as with no knowledge of Dreamweaver, Photoshop, etc. then no employer would even consider hiring us. Now however, I feel I am well on the way to gaining the valuable skills needed to gain an employer at the end of the course.

Attending lectures and tutorials is another 'how does that help' topic at first glance. Although not as obvious as PDP the skills which we learn in lectures are greatly needed. Participation in group discussions is something that will be yet another valuable trait in the industry, as talking in groups with people and getting ideas/views across will be something I will be likely to do almost every day.

So far on the course we have had little time at present to participate in 'group projects'. Although we have had our feedback meetings and a few small group projects no big projects have been completed. We are currently taking part in a group project however which is making use of our communication skills, attention to detail, time planning and most importantly negotiational skills.

With the industry we are aiming to work in, one skill I will need to have perfect is our oral presentation skills. Speaking to clients and pitching for work will be a must if we are to survive in the competitive market of web design and so far the course is teaching us this skill well.

Group projects are probably one of the most obvious skills related to the industry that we will learn on the course, as working with people in a group environment will again be most likely on a daily basis.

Already we have had numerous presentations in both individual and group scenarios, and there are still many more of them to come. Before starting the course I had not done many presentations before and I feel that from being on the course my presentational skills have greatly improved.

Writing essays and other forms of academic writing is something that I have had to do throughout my educational life. However because I aspired to be a journalist at one point in my career my written work can sometimes reflect this a bit too much and I can tend to 'waffle' on. Because in the industry time will be essential I will not have time to do this and since starting the course I think that my written work has improved when I need it to and is more formal.

In this industry observation is everything. If you walk around with your eyes shut then you will get nowhere. The course has taught me so much about looking at designs that I know struggle to just see something and not analysis it. This will be a huge help in the industry as it allows me to easily take inspiration from designs and store it in my mind for future reference when needed.

Research is something that has been done for almost every assignment that we have completed. It is the backbone to the course almost as finding out about what we are about to undertake is a must. Although time will be a factor again in the industry and research may not be taken for individual projects, we will probably research into the industry in our spare time to keep up to date with the latest technologies and such, especially if we go in to the freelance sector.

We have had very little in the way of 'exams' on the course which meant we had no real 'revision' to do. However, when it has come to writing essays we have had to review our notes that we have taken in lessons and put them into our own words. This will again be a much needed skill in the industry as reviewing notes we have taken from client meetings and such will be something that again will be done regularly.

The things that I really need to improve on to do well in the industry is my presentational skills and my written skills. Although both have greatly improved since I started the course I still find it hard to distance myself from my journalistic traits and to present confidently.

Ready, Aim, Fire!

The second year officially started today and with it many changes. The first being having 5 less people in the group, the second being our 'blogs now being called 'Online Learning Journals' and being 'themed'. Lucky for me then that the first week's theme is on targets both the next 6 months and the next few years.

The next 6 months or so is easy enough. Come February time we will be onto our 5th assignment of the year, with 3 handed in. Looking back to a previous blog I set my self 4 main goals for the year as a whole.

• Get onto the second year

• Get at least a pass on every assignment first time

• Obtain at least 4 merits on assignments

• Improve on my design process (Design more than 6/7 thumbnails)

Now, one of those is already met, so that only leaves me with three to go. Improving on my design process will be the easiest goal for me to meet, as it is something I can do on every single assignment (starting now) and is something I will really concentrate on this year. Getting a pass on every assignment first time will hopefully be relatively easy too (so far so good anyway) but meeting my goal of 4 merits will be the most difficult. Out of the assignments we will have done in 6 months I will hopefully have gained 3 out of 3 merits for them. If I complete this goal then that means I am well on track to get at least 4 merits this year, if not 5.

With Steve's new Merit/Distinction criteria sheets this should be even better, as first impressions seem to be that they are a lot better than last year, and on the whole a lot more obvious as to what we have to do to achieve the higher marks.

This of course then leads me onto my mid-range targets. In 2 or 3 years time, what do I want to be doing. Now I have never made any attempt to hide the fact that my career prospects are all over the place, and even after completing the first year and getting onto the second year I am still unclear about what I really want to be doing. For this reason this is perhaps one of the hardest 'Online Learning Journals' I have had to do so far, and probably will have to do. I have learnt so many skills in such a little time on the course that by the end of this year I will hopefully have enough skills to be able to go into whatever career path I choose.

Perhaps the most worrying thing is that if the second year goes anywhere near as quick as the first year then my time to decide is quickly running out. The best response I can give is that if I do decide to go into teaching (or any other random career that comes into my head) then no doubt in two years I will still be studying (be it for another HE level course or to get a top up to a full degree), if I decide to go into the web design career route then hopefully in two years I will be in the industry working. Who knows...

Like with real targets the wind affects the direction the arrow travels in, and at this moment in time the arrow is still being blown in different directions whilst traveling towards it's final point.