Big question: how much do you value a formal web design education?

Do I think art schools are a good thing? YES. I often wish I had formal education in design with training in colour theory and typography. Do I think they are 100 per cent necessary? NO. It’s important to remember that even art schools produce bad designers. Part of me wishes I had a degree or formal education in design, but I also feel that not knowing some things has helped me be more open to self-growth, experimentation and just having a diverse skill set.

Half of my friends have a design education and the other half are self-taught like myself. Some people need the structure and guidance of a formal education. Others are do-it-yourself types, who need to move at their own speed and figure things out through trial and error. Neither way is perfect. In the end, all that matters is whether your work is any good or not. Ultimately, success and beautiful work depends upon the individual and how hard you’re willing to work in or out of school, to learn the skills they need to survive.

The WaSP InterACT team and Opera's Web Standards Curriculum are programmes aiming at correcting these major issues, by creating open course structures available to anyone, anywhere. These courses are created by teachers and experts who are practitioners in today's web and are structured to stay up to date. They focus on teaching concepts rather than tools, from visual design basics to information architecture, to working with clients and all the practical bits in between.

Finding good mentors is one of the best ways that I've found to succeed in this field. Learning from others' knowledge and experience is priceless. That's the tremendous value of a formal web design education: there's a greater chance that you'll have direct access to more smart and experienced people to mentor you, whether they’re your peers or your teachers. I wouldn't be where I am today without the mentorship of John Langdon and Jervis Thompson, former teachers and current friends whose wisdom I practice daily.

If you value formal education but not formal web design education, it's likely a result of the outdated state of education in our industry. But we can change that. Program directors are looking tirelessly for passionate teachers with modern applicable skills. Go talk to the directors of your local colleges' or universities' design, multimedia or programming departments, or get involved with programs like WaSP InterACT or the Opera Web Standards Curriculum. Web design education could be a force to be reckoned with, but it takes a few passionate souls to lead the charge.

Not a great deal. There are plenty of best practices you could learn, but the only way to really know is to design it yourself, code it yourself and test it yourself. Learn by talking to other web designers and picking apart their code and their data. The web is evolving so fast I can't imagine trying to teach a course I expected to be relevant for graduates in two or three years. I actually went to school for (more or less) web design, but I didn't really learn until I was doing it every day.

Web designers, for the most part, seem to learn what they know by reading blogs, sharing resources and lots of trial and error. Because the industry is redefined every year – from tables to CSS layouts, web safe to web fonts, fixed-width to responsive/adaptive, flash to HTML5 canvas, etc – we need to be working together to define what learning about the web in a classroom setting should look like.

A formal web design education could be useful, depending on how up-to-date the content is – courses teaching outdated techniques can do more harm than good. An alternative could be learning through practical experience, using each project as an opportunity to learn something new. A self-motivated education can be gained online and from books, although it takes dedication to keep pushing yourself to learn and use new techniques. Of course, after a formal education is over everyone must continue to learn in this way anyway, but a good formal education can give a solid base to build on.

I think design education is very important, but sadly the quality of web design education is stuck in the 90s and is failing students on almost every level. Rather than teaching the fundamentals of layout, typography and colour theory, most web design degrees focus on technology and tools. Rather than understanding the tenants of human computer interaction and the nature of the web, we see out-of-date lecturers teaching techniques which have been discredited by the industry years ago.

There are some great lecturers, like the Web Standardistas, who manage to keep current and teach the latest techniques. However people like this are few and far between. Instead it's not uncommon to find lecturers from traditional computer science backgrounds co-opted into teaching web related courses they have little or no practical experience in because; "Hey, they get computers and how hard can CSS really be?"

I'd love to know what a formal web design education is. Having spent far too much time in higher education and seen too many communication faculties with ‘web degrees’ bolted onto their traditional offerings, I approach anyone with a degree in web design with a healthy dose of scepticism. First and foremost, I value what you've done, not what you studied. Show me the last site you built, the last app you wrote, not a diploma.

While I have extensive formal education in computer science, professional writing, psychology and human-computer interaction, the experience I've gained in just doing the work day-in and day-out has made me who I am. Still, I am grateful for the time I had to explore without constraints, without fear and without consequence. My education is the foundation of my practice and it would have taken me a lot longer to get where I am without it.

I’ve had the opportunity to consult on new degrees and new courses at colleges who are beginning to offer web-specific programs. Given my art background and how much I value that, my feedback has always been that while these new programs are amazing and progressive and surely will bring about a new age of kick-ass web kids, don't forget about the fundamental courses that transcend any specific technology.

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The Creative Bloq team is made up of a group of design fans, and has changed and evolved since Creative Bloq began back in 2012. The current website team consists of eight full-time members of staff: Editor Georgia Coggan, Deputy Editor Rosie Hilder, Ecommerce Editor Beren Neale, Senior News Editor Daniel Piper, Editor, Digital Art and 3D Ian Dean, Tech Reviews Editor Erlingur Einarsson and Ecommerce Writer Beth Nicholls and Staff Writer Natalie Fear, as well as a roster of freelancers from around the world. The 3D World and ImagineFX magazine teams also pitch in, ensuring that content from 3D World and ImagineFX is represented on Creative Bloq.

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