Web design/programming courses - suggestions

I've been doing my own websites for about 7 years now, and am considering slowly moving into the web design industry.

Can anyone suggest any courses (online) that would be good to do? I would prefer to hear about your first-hand experience (ie. you have actually completed the course yourself).

Or, do you think that I should enroll in a local university/technical college web design course? Rather than doing it online? Or maybe I should do both?

The only problem with the uni/college option is that it would probably take me 6 years to complete their course, as it would have to be done part-time.

Some of the things that I feel need to be covered in the course: PHP, Flash, AJAX, Java, CSS, HTML. Feel free to add to this list...

Cheers

Web Design is mostly a practical thing to learn. If you really want to go for any course, it's always better to do a regular one from any recognized University/Institute. Or else you can simply log on to http://www.w3schools.com/, which is a official resource for learning web design and its absolutely free. You will get tutorials for all the subjects that you have mentioned and just everything about designing a website. Hopefully it'll help you.

Being an expert in such a field cannot be acquired overnight, and we all know that. Formal education cannot guarantee success in this field. It is how you develop that logic formulation and your creativity. Both of which you cannot learn from any school. As a web developer, what you can do is practice on your own. You can be better off reading forums online where you can learn and pick up things. As for the technical side of web development, i would prefer going to a local university. I get bored doing online classes. But i guess, to each his own.

Die Hard wrote:Or else you can simply log on to http://www.w3schools.com/

I have used this resource when designing my websites and found it very helpful (however I've never complete a full class as such).

blakeh wrote:i would prefer going to a local university

I am leaning towards this, but it's just the time factor that's putting me off...

I've been doing the web development certificaton from the Open University. Has been helpful in filling in the gaps and introducing new languages. They're now ending this certification but are bringing out a combined 60 point course for web design, but not too sure when that is getting released.

Die Hard wrote:Or else you can simply log on to http://www.w3schools.com/, which is a official resource for learning web design and its absolutely free.

I learned the base of almost every part of the web I know from there. I would say you should start (or more of continue there) try some practical applications and pick up some O'Reilly books along the way. It's my opinion that that's really the best way you're going to get what you need, most times (at least for me) university courses were a waste of time, because they had to be for many people, whereas I could gear my learning to myself online.

I know I repeated what's been said, but I think it should be emphasized.

I register on Lynda.com for courses sometimes. There are some great specific courses there, although I am more of a 'book person' myself (eg. Wrox)

I've a degree in mechatronics and I was wondering if I could start afresh with programming. I just can't imagine myself, a 52-year-old grandfather with a college task to domyhomeworkonline and meet the deadlines... Just sounds too weird to me.

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Hi, I'm 43 and still willing to learn programming, so it's never too late. I started with Coding Dojo to learn the basic programming algorithms.
Interestingly, my son is a computer noob (he's majoring in linguistics).

Wow, that was strange. I just wrote an incredibly long comment but after I clicked submit my comment didn’t appear. Maybe it was an error in the internet connection.
well, I’m not writing all that over again. Anyways, just wanted to say