An Evaluation of a Practical Training Course in IT at University Level

The importance of providing technical skills is often underestimated in the course of a university degree mainly in the Engineering and scientific fields of study. It is often the case that there is a mismatch between the practical skills that students should have at their workplaceand the technical skills and knowledge that they acquire at University, where much emphasis is laid on theoretical concepts. Our concern here isthe provision of relevant practical skills for Computer Science students. For the first time, the computing department at our university has set-upand conducted a fully practical module for Computer Science students. Our aim in this paper is to evaluate the effectiveness of this module andthe learning-by-doing approach that has been adopted. This paper also provides a comparison of the module delivered with popular technicalprofessional courses. The results of our feedback form have also been presented. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first detailed evaluationof a practical training course in IT at university level