Developing microlabs using Google web toolkit
Barry L. Kurtz, James B. Fenwick, Philip Meznar · 2012
Closed labs have become a common feature in computer science education because they provide hands-on experience in a supervised setting. Microlabs extend this approach into the lecture format with very short hands-on activities in the "middle of the lecture." The programming microlab approach was developed for a distributed computing course that integrated all levels of parallelism (multicore, cluster, and grid). Since that time we have developed logical microlabs where students solve conceptual problems that do not involve programming. These are integrated into a Microlab Learning Cycle. We want our microlabs to be usable with a wide variety of computing devices, including tablets. After experimenting with different development environments we have adopted the Google Web Toolkit (GWT). After presenting the current status of our activities, we discuss future directions for microlab development. This work is supported, in part, by three National Science Foundation grants.