Trying a new teaching strategy

I did try a new strategy with my students in Computer Hardware & Networking course by sending them in groups to our IT Help desk (I really appreciate that initiative from our IT Service Dept.) to practice some concepts before I teach it, for example they learn from this working environment the different types of hardware and software used in computer by observing/practicing number of problem solving scenarios that is happening on daily based, that really helped me a lot when I was teaching these terms and concepts during the class. Plus students’ feedback was really good about this experience.

There were many tricky points in this strategy:

1-      I got my IT dept. chair approval & IT service Manger approval.

2-      5% of the total marks were given to this strategy (activity).

3-      A dedicated time need to be agreeing with IT Help desk.

4-      Attendence was taken by IT Help desk representative.

5-      You need to predefine which part of the curriculum will be covered by this strategy. (In my case it was only one chapter).

6-      It is a good strategy to warm-up students but you need to have a dedicated computer lab to pursuing on what was built during their IT Help desk engagement.

7-      It needs a lot of coordination to make it happen smoothly.

Another strategy that I would recommend for IT students is engaging some of them with any new IT project that is related to their discipline that is happening in our college (for example last semester we had engaged some students with our College wireless LAN project deployments).

Finally; I think learning by doing is the greatest teaching approach whenever it is doable.