Assessment of cloud-based Computational Environments for higher education

J. Damian Segrelles and German Molto. Assessment of cloud-based Computational Environments for higher education. In 2016 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE), pp. 1–9, IEEE, 10 2016.

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Abstract

Education in Engineering requires bringing the students to scenarios as close to reality as possible. Indeed, the new technologies have fostered the development of a wide spec- trum of Computational Environments (CE), such as simulators, virtual laboratories or specific software tools. These environments typically share the same Physical Hardware Resources (PHRs) (e.g. laboratories of PCs) for different subjects on which the CEs are deployed. It is especially important to properly and efficiently manage the rationalization of these PHRs so that the level of service, scalability and versatility is maintained without requiring additional investments in new hardware. The innovation in this work consists on introducing Virtualized CEs (VCEs) based on Cloud Computing by means of the open-source ODISEA platform. The benefits have been assesed and evaluated through 12 educational activities carried out in 8 subjects across 4 degrees at the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV), in Spain. The results assessed in the paper demonstrate that ODISEA provides economical benefits for the educational institutions. Also, the platform provides the students with ubiquitous and highly available access to VCEs. In addition, this approach fosters BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) where students use their own computers to access the remote labs provided by the VCEs.

BibTeX Entry

@inproceedings{Segrelles2016acb,
   abstract = {Education in Engineering requires bringing the students to scenarios as close to reality as possible. Indeed, the new technologies have fostered the development of a wide spec- trum of Computational Environments (CE), such as simulators, virtual laboratories or specific software tools. These environments typically share the same Physical Hardware Resources (PHRs) (e.g. laboratories of PCs) for different subjects on which the CEs are deployed. It is especially important to properly and efficiently manage the rationalization of these PHRs so that the level of service, scalability and versatility is maintained without requiring additional investments in new hardware. The innovation in this work consists on introducing Virtualized CEs (VCEs) based on Cloud Computing by means of the open-source ODISEA platform. The benefits have been assesed and evaluated through 12 educational activities carried out in 8 subjects across 4 degrees at the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV), in Spain. The results assessed in the paper demonstrate that ODISEA provides economical benefits for the educational institutions. Also, the platform provides the students with ubiquitous and highly available access to VCEs. In addition, this approach fosters BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) where students use their own computers to access the remote labs provided by the VCEs.},
   author = {J. Damian Segrelles and German Molto},
   doi = {10.1109/FIE.2016.7757604},
   editor = {IEEE},
   isbn = {978-1-5090-1790-4},
   booktitle = {2016 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)},
   keywords = {cloud computing,education,technology-enhanced learning},
   month = {10},
   pages = {1-9},
   publisher = {IEEE},
   title = {Assessment of cloud-based Computational Environments for higher education},
   url = {http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7757604/},
   year = {2016}
}