The Integrated Lab: An Assessment to Combining Classroom Curriculum and Lab Experiments to Teach Information Systems Development Course

In an information systems development course, it is crucial that students gain both conceptual understanding and practical skills. This is important due to the growing demands of industry for qualified software developers. However, the current teaching approaches fall short to fulfill these demands due to the way such a course is being delivered. In this paper we propose an effective teaching approach that relies on delivering theoretical and practical contents altogether in the lab rather than splitting them. We call it the integrated approach. It is based on the idea that students study the theory part in the lab and immediately execute a series of laboratory exercises implementing what they have studied in theory. We describe the details of the integrated approach and compare it to the traditional lecture delivery approach. Examinations final marks demonstrate that participants in the integrated approach outperformed those attended the traditional approach. We conclude by listing some disadvantages of such an approach.