Opportunity
The Norwegian University for Science and Technology (NTNU), in Trondheim, Norway, offers a wide a range of bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral programs predominantly in technology and natural sciences, but also in the humanities, social sciences, economics, health sciences, education science, and aesthetic disciplines. Of the 39,000 students, about half study technology and the natural sciences.
The Department for Informatics and e-Learning at NTNU already teaches an on-campus course on how to set up computer networks on physical servers and equipment. The creation of a virtual laboratory offering the same capacities would offer several advantages:
- enable students to create and configure servers in a virtual environment;
- reduce costs for equipment;
- reduce the hours necessary to configure the servers for use by students in on-campus setting;
- enable staff to gain experience working with virtual technology; and
- provide a flexible virtual laboratory as a learning environment for both students and faculty.
One of the challenges was how to replicate the facilities of the physical laboratory within a limited budget. Although technology for a virtual lab is available, the cost of the licenses is prohibitive.
The Research and Development Foundation TISIP, often working in cooperation with the Department for Informatics and e-Learning at NTNU, specializes in e-learning, and offers courses for business people, public institutions, universities and colleges. TISIP is a Vocational School, approved by the Norwegian Agency for Quality Assurance in Education, and offers accredited courses and programs, which can be assessed for vocational credits.
As TISIP wanted to create a virtual laboratory that would open for possibilities of offering an online course that taught students how to set up computer networks, the foundation funded a project to look for possible technology and to implement solutions for this purpose.
The Department for Informatics and e-Learning
Innovation
Working with colleagues, Professor Bjorn Klefstad ran a pilot course with 14 students, using Microsoft Azure, a cloud computing platform, and other software. As the available applications were not suitable for all the components of the course, the teachers often had to create their own services. In addition, the course is for students who are not eligible for government funded studies, and the costs had to be controlled to keep student tuition low. Therefore high license fees for technology were unacceptable.
The 20-week course in Network Administration and IT Infrastructure offered by TISIP is divided into nine modules, arranged so students take exams after every three modules. Students, most of whom are already employed in the industry, are able to re-do exams as part of the flexibility offered to them. The core of the information is delivered through video lectures per module, especially showing practical demonstrations. In addition, the students can contact the teacher and get face-to-face guidance through video for live demonstrations and answering questions, as well as to get some help with practical exercises.
The virtual laboratory used in the pilot course consists of two different technologies.
Microsoft Azure as a service in the cloud and a local installation installed on a physical host. The students get a Microsoft Azure account, which gives them access to the Azure portal (Azure.com). In this portal, they can build their own virtual networks, servers and workstations. The students are able to access, install and configure this equipment from their own private computer. In this environment, they do their practical exercises.
A local installation with many physical servers is also available. Each student or group of students get their own physical server. On these servers, they have to construct their own virtual platform comparable to the Microsoft Azure portal. Furthermore, they can build their own virtual networks, servers and workstations.
Outcomes and Benefits
The first group of students completed the online course, taking advantage of the virtual computer lab, and their course rating on factors of both content and process averaged 5.6 out of 6, signifying high levels of satisfaction.
The most important factor for the students was the easy and constant access to the instructors, who could demonstrate to individual students on their own computers how to set up computer networks. The students had multiple opportunities during synchronous sessions and using other connections to ask for individual help. The strategy, while very successful, can only be used with small groups of students.
For this pilot course, TISIP was responsible for the coordination, management of the course, the content and teaching. The results of the project was shared with NTNU and both organizations could make use of the results. The cooperation between university and foundation worked well.
Many of the students are working in IT without certification, making access to formal qualifications is very important for them. As well, the course stresses practical skills, enabling students to instantly apply what they learn.
Challenges and Enhancements
Part of the course design had the students working together, looking at and commenting on each others’ solutions to assigned network connection challenges. Because of time constraints, this aspect was not very successful. To address this challenge, a Master’s student at NTNU is doing his thesis on strategies that can be used to improve and enrich the interactivity in this course.
It is challenging to be the course instructor, as there are many screens and communication lines to watch – servers, videos, and questions and comments on the chat link. There is also a need for a reliable back-up system, especially for the Internet connection.
Potential
Work continues to develop new solutions for the virtual laboratory technology. The goal is to find open source technology that can be installed on their servers and adapted to their needs, with the ultimate goal of developing the ability to use only one technology for all course requirements.
The project concept is also being pursued on a European level. Bjorn Klefstad is involved with writing an application to ERAMUS, the European Union funding program, to work with partners in Denmark, Italy, Spain, Norway (NTNU), Lithuania and Slovenia. They want to look at the technology necessary to create a virtual technical laboratory, set up the communication channels to support it, and assess which learning management system is best suited to this purpose. A pilot course would be jointly developed in English, translated, and then tested on a European basis to gather information on how to improve the technological platform and the pedagogy.
For Further Information
Bjorn Klefstad
Associate Professor
Department for Informatics and e-Learning
Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Trondheim, Norway
