IT Teaching Labs: Innovations in a Distance Education Era

Computer laboratories, or simply labs, are crucial in many fields including Information Technologies (IT), Management Information Systems (MIS), Computer Science (CS) and Software Engineering (SE). Labs play a vital role in helping students achieve the know-how and develop problem solving, communication and collaboration skills. Traditional labs comprising desktop computers organized into lines or U shapes have been around for almost forty years. Many of the contemporary labs look very different from their ancestors. They are designed to facilitate a myriad of learning activities including solo learning, testing and perhaps foremost, collaborative group work. This paper reviews some ergonomics issues and investigates examples of innovative labs being developed nowadays. We elaborate on the innovative labs' powerfulness in addressing the drawbacks of traditional labs as well in supporting innovative teaching methods, student creativity and interactions, and the education eco-system engagement. Further, we present several ergonomic tips as a lab proposal for Zayed University (ZU) and under the computing education research umbrella.