What's the right way to teach IT in a business school?

Traditionally, we've had some options:

• An Intro to IS/IT course for non-technical majors, with some combination of strategic/managerial overview with specific office/database/web page skills.
• A full Information Systems major, like the IS 2002 Model Curriculum, with complete classes in programming, systems analysis, database, networking, and project management.
• Send students to another department, like Computer Science, for specific programming or web design courses.

We'd like to add another option.

We think that recent progress in open source platforms for the web (like Wordpress, Drupal, and Joomla!) makes it possible for previously non-technical students to dive right in and start delivering technology that has business value. These open source platforms offer the basic functionality of a real, industrial-strength website 'out of the box'.

Non-technical students can get started relatively quickly, without having to train as if they were building an entire website or database from a blank sheet of paper. They can grapple with content organization, administration, analytics, advertising and search issues, revenue, and, most importantly, real users more quickly than ever before. The open source platforms are designed so that simple customization and add-ons are easy, but the details of the code or style sheets are available if and when they desire.

The analogy we use is from foreign language teaching - immersion. When some of us learned foreign languages the traditional way, we spent years learning grammar and never got the skills, experience, or confidence to actually speak to someone. A more modern approach is to throw language students into real situations much sooner. Even if they don't speak perfectly, they learn faster.

The immersion approach has its drawbacks. Students can lack a lot of knowledge we think they should have, as they're offering services that others come to depend on. But as a learning strategy, and as a motivation strategy to leave students wanting more knowledge, we think it's worth exploring.