Augmenting Cloud concepts learning with Open source software environment
Meenaxi M Raikar, Padmashree Desai, M. N. Vijayalakshmi, Prashant M. Narayankar · 2018
Cloud computing technology usage has emerged as a prominent field in providing the computation services to the users using the internet. The 3As-AnyTime, AnyWhere and AnyDevice concept changed the industry towards user-centric needs to collaborate and connect with people, which makes software industries to adopt the cloud-based development environment. This created the scope for educationist to enable the students with the skills related to cloud computing technology. A course on distributed and cloud computing is introduced at the undergraduate level for catering to this. The authors discuss the challenges faced in teaching-learning cloud computing technology and the method followed to overcome these. The two main challenges are designing the course content and adopting suitable open source infrastructure tools for hands-on experience. The authors have put efforts in adoption and usage of cloud computing in undergraduate engineering level by proposing a modified Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). This model helped to identify different parameters/attributes to improve academic performance. An activity-based laboratory course is designed in line with the theory course. All the activities are implemented using the open source software environment. The activities planned in the course are assessed based on the outcome based evaluation. The graduate attribute addressed in the course are domain knowledge gain in cloud computing concepts, problem-solving, usage of modern tools and life-long learning. The average attainment of the stated graduate attribute is 77.89% in the course internal semester assessment. The effectiveness of proposed method is validated by defining hypotheses relating to the research questions framed. Results prominently speak about the advantage of TAM and its implementation in the course.