To date, this project has several findings.
- Students think that the use of real computer networking hardware and software (versus simulation) will improve their handling of real-world tasks after graduation. This belief improves their attitude toward the conceptual content of the course.
- The approach that students take to solve network physics problems is similar to what has been observed by the physics education community in the 1980s and 1990s (i.e., the reliance on using equations without understanding). But we suspect that the fundamental reason for behavior is the same but the remedies may be different (we are still exploring this issue).
- Our assessment study showed that learning events take place when using ONL. We have observed roughly equal amounts of learning when using ONL as in classroom lectures. This result highlights the importance of laboratory experiences in technical education (even when a laboratory is accessed remotely).
John DeHart, et. al., “The Open Network Laboratory,” 2006 Special Interest Group in Computer Science Education (SIGCSE) Proceedings, March 2006.
Ken Wong, Tilman Wolf, Sergey Gorinsky and Jonathan Turner, “Teaching Experiences With A Virtual Networking Laboratory,” 2007 SIGCSE Proceedings, March 2007.
Charlie Wiseman, Ken Wong, Tilman Wolf and Sergey Gorinsky, “Operational Experience With A Virtual Networking Laboratory,” 2008 SIGCSE Proceedings, March 2008.
Tilman Wolf, “Assessing Student Learning in a Virtual Laboratory Environment,” to appear in IEEE Transactions on Education.
Tilman Wolf and Rui Yang, “Design of a System to Track Student Progress on Virtual Laboratories,” to appear in Proc. Of 2009 Northeast American Society of Engineering Education Conference, April 2009.
This project expects to generate the following products: concept quizzes in network physics; an assessment database for evaluating understanding in networking and ONL; a remote laboratory interface with session-sharing and session-recording and; a session analyzer.