Hands-On Network Programming Projects in the Cloud
Weiying Zhu · 2015
Hands-on activities are important for computer science students to achieve their learning objectives. Compared to developing and maintaining on-campus physical or virtual laboratories, using the public cloud to host hands-on activities is a very promising approach because of the scalability, flexibility, security, cost-efficiency, and accessibility of the services offered in the public cloud. This paper presents the design of four cloud-based network programming projects and our experience of using the services and infrastructure in the public cloud for these hands-on projects in our Computer Networks course. Each student was able to use multiple virtual machines in the public cloud together with a local computer to develop and test networking programs. Both the instructor's observation and student surveys demonstrated that our approach has a strong positive impact on the student learning experience. A vast majority of the students favor using the public cloud not only in this course but also in other computer science courses if applicable.