At UC Berkeley, many lower-division CS courses have been drastically restructured to emphasize hands-on learning, with six hours of lab a week and only a single hour of lecture. This shift has supported the development of what we call lab-centric instruction. This pedagogical approach emphasizes collaboration, individual support from course staff, and helping students make use of formative assessment. The approach and results regarding the effectiveness of the pedagogy will be presented and will demonstrate the importance of improving and evaluating computer science education.