Experiences teaching mixed mode systems administration courses using decentralized virtual machines

• Authors: Michael Ruth
• Venue: Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges
• Year: 2013

Systems Administration courses are typically taught as upper level courses in Information Technology (IT) programs. Since these courses are focused on learning and applying skills, they require considerable hands-on practice in environments designed to simulate real-world business environments. In practice, however, factors such as time, money, and space limit the ability of institutions to offer students these opportunities and at our institution, Roosevelt University, we suffer from an additional factor, namely mixed-mode courses. Our mixed-mode classes have traditional students who meet face-to-face during class and distance-learning students who meet using meeting software simultaneously. One of the primary issues in teaching mixed-mode classes is delivering similar experiences to both sets of students and we solve these issues by using virtual machines (VMs) in a decentralized model to provide students with environments which simulate real-world business environments for hands-on learning and practice. The primary focus and contribution of this paper is the description of the experiences gained through using a decentralized VM model in the development and teaching of three courses focused on systems administration topics, specifically our System Administration, Network Administration, and Internet Security courses.