Managing Online Computer Labs

To keep an online computer lab fully operational is critical to the success of teaching online technology-based courses. Unlike a general purpose computer lab where heavy security measures are used to prevent users from damaging computer systems and network equipments, an online computer lab for teaching a technology-based course must release some of the security measures so that students can practice and perform an administrator’s duty. That is, students and faculty members must be given the administrator’s privilege to the computers and network equipments dedicated to them. For many students, this is the first time that they are the administrators of network servers. You can expect that there will be many unintentional mistakes while performing the administrator’s duty. Students will need help from the lab management team or the technical support personnel in the team to fix their problems and keep the hands-on process going. Some severe mistakes may cause a system to shut down and unable to be rebooted. In such a case, the lab management team will need to help the students to reinstall the entire system. Once upgrades to the operating system and application software are available, the lab management team will also need to install these upgrades in the lab. The content of a technology-based course will follow the change of technology on the market. Often, instructors will update the course content for each semester. These updates need to be done by the lab management team before a semester starts. Technical training is another task that will be carried out by the lab management team. Security related issues are also important matter should be dealt with by the lab management team. As we can see, the online computer lab maintenance tasks will keep the lab management team busy all year round. Since the security issues have been covered in a separate chapter, this chapter will focus on the maintenance tasks other than the security related tasks.

Testing and Evaluating Online Computer Labs

The process of developing an online computer lab is not a linear process. It is a cycle of developing a new lab, testing, evaluating an existing lab, getting feedback from users, and improving the existing lab. An online computer lab is a complicated project, especially if it a medium or large online computer lab. For such a complex project, it is difficult to make everything perfect at the first time. Some of the implementation may not meet the requirements exactly. As we all know, there would be some mistakes. There could be some conflicts when multiple classes share the lab resources. Also, technology changes at a rapid pace. Following the change of technology, the content of technology-based courses will change with it. As a result, equipments, software, and services will be updated accordingly. These factors will lead to the redesign or update of the online computer lab. Testing and evaluation are critical steps for meeting the ever changing requirements of teaching and hands-on practice. All in all, testing and evaluation provide guidelines for improving support for technology-based courses. In this chapter, we will discuss the issues related to testing and evaluation of an existing computer lab.

Client Development for Online Computer Labs

This chapter starts with the discussion of the issues related to the configuration of client hardware and software. Next, this chapter will discuss the configuration of remote access. We will take a closer look at how to connect students’ computers to the server located on campus. Then, we will discuss the issues related to the installation and configuration of audio and video devices with which students can listen and watch live demonstrations on their client computers. We will also discuss the tools for collaboration. These collaboration tools will help students with group activities.

Web-Based Teaching Systems and Technologies

In Chapter 1, you are given a brief overview about Web-based teaching and technology-based courses. The discussion in Chapter 1 indicates that Web-based teaching is heavily dependent on technologies, especially for technology-based courses and extra effort is needed to implement Web-based teaching for technology-based courses. As technology advances, even those technology-based courses that depend on a computer lab can be taught one hundred percent online. Students are able to access the computers specially designed for their courses via the Internet. Technology tools have been assisting us in achieving this goal. It will be beneficial for the development of an online computer lab if we can better understand the functionalities of the technologies involved and the role played by these technologies. In this chapter, we will discuss the issues related to the technology tools that are commonly used to create online teaching materials, manage Web-based teaching (WBT) systems, and develop online computer labs. An overview will be given about what the technologies can do and how we can use them in creating online teaching materials. After those technologies are introduced, we will exam the types of Web-based teaching systems that require online computer labs to support hands-on practice.

Developing Online Computer Lab-Based Teaching Materials

To get an online computer lab ready for teaching and hands-on practice, instructors should develop lab manuals and other online teaching materials. The lab teaching materials can be text, a combination of text and figures, or truly multimedia based materials including figures, sounds, animations, and video clips. By including multimedia in the instruction, the quality of the lab teaching materials can be greatly improved. The use of technology can make the tasks of developing multimedia teaching materials relatively easy. On the other hand, the use of multimedia teaching materials is limited to the type of hardware and software that are available on the server and client sides. Also, different instructions will have different requirements for multimedia materials. In this chapter, we will have a closer look at the issues related to the design of lab instructions and multimedia based teaching materials.

Online Computer Lab Planning

In Chapter 1 and Chapter 2, we have done overviews about the issues related to online computer labs such as Web-based teaching and various Web-based teaching systems. We have also briefly discussed technology-based courses and the technologies that can be used in the development of WBT and online computer labs. Starting from this chapter, we will discuss issues in designing and developing online computer labs for technology-based courses. The first task in designing online computer labs is to determine what type of online computer lab should be developed. It all depends on the teaching requirements. The developed computer lab should meet the needs of hands-on practice and balance the support, cost, and the complexity of technologies. This chapter provides you with a systematic way of identifying the needs of an online computer lab. In this chapter, we will discuss various approaches to decide what the teaching requirements are. We will start off with the topics related to online computer lab development process which will show you the big picture about developing online computer labs. Then, we will walk through the topics such as identifying hands-on requirements, identifying resources, and assessing costs. Investigating these topics will help you decide how big your project is, what the growth rate is, what the costs are, if there is funding for the project, and what kind of support you need to get from the computer service team. The next topic is about project planning which deals with issues such as budgeting, scheduling a time line, forming a project development team, and implementing the project. This topic helps designers to deliver an efficient plan in developing a successful online computer lab.

Introduction to Online Teaching of Technology-Based Courses

With the improvement of the Internet and computer technologies, online or Web-based teaching has become an important teaching and learning method in educational institutions. In various degrees, online teaching has been implemented in almost every higher education institution. To better understand online teaching systems and how they are related to the book’s main topics, online computer labs for technology-based courses, we will take an overview about online teaching and technology-based courses in this chapter. We will take a look at the strengths and weaknesses of the Web-based teaching (WBT) systems. We will also investigate the roles played by these Web-based teaching systems in teaching technology-based courses. The investigation of these aspects will lead to the discussion to the book’s main topics.

Trends in Online Teaching of Technology-Based Courses

Online (or Web-based) teaching has become one of the main approaches to delivering knowledge. As mentioned in Chapter 1, almost all of the universities have adopted online teaching. Certainly, we have entered a new era for higher education. As the momentum builds up, more and more technology-based courses are also taught through online classes. Online computer labs are a key element to support the server-side hands-on practice in an online technology-based class. Due to the fact that an online computer lab is highly related to the advance of technology, lab-based online teaching still has a lot of areas that need to be improved. With that in mind, we will investigate the trends in Web-based teaching and in computer lab related technologies in this chapter.

Server Development for Online Computer Labs

This chapter will first address the server-side hardware configuration issues. After the discussion of the hardware configuration, we will deal with the server-side software configuration issues. We will discuss some general procedures of configuring the hardware and software with the lab design objectives in mind. Lastly, we will discuss some configuration issues about various special purpose servers.

Strategies for Developing Online Computer Labs

In Chapter 3, we have discussed the issues of planning for an online computer lab. From the collected information, the online lab designer can get the users’ views about the project. The next task is to design a lab that will meet the design objectives. To accomplish this task, you need to first develop a model of the online computer lab. Then, use the model to verify if the objectives have been achieved. Modeling allows you to select appropriate architecture for the lab project. During the modeling process, you need to illustrate the flow of activities. We will discuss the modeling issues in this chapter. We will first investigate the types of lab architectures and analyze how lab architecture fits a specific design objective. For each of the architectures, we will discuss the strategies to select technologies to be used to construct the lab.