Enhancing Teaching Effectiveness in Mobile Application Development with Structured Practice

Enping Li, Mengkun Yang

Abstract: Mobile application development is gaining increasing attention due to the rapid growth of the mobile technologies and mobile application market. Many universities are putting effort on integrating mobile application development into curriculum. The complexity and consistent changing in mobile development environment brings barriers and difficulties in course development. This paper describes how to enhance teaching effectiveness and engage students actively in mobile application development class through structured practice. The proposed structured practice features two levels of hands-on practice: first, prepare students with foundational knowledge and skills by having them follow the instructor on developing base applications; second, the philosophy of challenge-based learning is adopted in practice, where students are encouraged to independently work on developing implementations for applications with gradually increased complexity. Student feedbacks and performance have indicated the structured practice is an effective way of teaching mobile development which not only enhances the teaching effectiveness but also provides students a positive learning experience. Details of course design and project samples are provided to assist audiences in understanding the usage of structured practice and help with the developing of mobile application development courses.