Exploring Instructional Computing Platforms for a Small Liberal Arts College: A Case Study with NoSQL
Aijuan Dong, Baoying Wang · 2016
Large-scale computing technology, such as NoSQL database systems and cloud computing, has become an important knowledge area in computer science curriculum. In this study, we experimented and evaluated two instructional computing platforms-Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Hood College Virtual Computing Lab (HOOD VCL)-for offering NoSQL database systems in a small liberal arts college. We tested four types of NoSQL systems: Redis, MongoDB, Cassandra, and Neo4j. With each system, students performed a few realistic lab exercises with either Amazon EC2 or Hood VCL. Based on student feedback, while Amazon EC2 and Hood VCL are comparable to students with respect to accessibility, easy setup and maintenance, and reliability, survey results show a majority of students (86%) are more likely to use Amazon EC2 for similar data processing course work in the future. In addition, 64% of students believe Amazon Web Services (AWS) are cost-effective and 82% of them believe that the AWS experience gained on public cloud infrastructure and pay-as-you-go resource allocation is helpful to their career development.