Authors:
Olivier Berger
1
;
J. Paul Gibson
2
;
Claire Lecocq
2
and
Christian Bac
1
Affiliations:
1
Institut Mines-Télécom, France
;
2
Institut Mines-Télécom and UMR CNRS, France
Keyword(s):
Remote Learning, Virtualization, Open Education Resources, MOOC, Vagrant.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Computer-Supported Education
;
Distance Education
;
e-Learning
;
e-Learning Hardware and Software
;
Ubiquitous Learning
;
Virtual Labs and Virtual Classrooms
Abstract:
Technical advances in machine and system virtualization are creating opportunities for remote learning to
provide significantly better support for active education approaches. Students now, in general, have personal
computers that are powerful enough to support virtualization of operating systems and networks. As a consequence,
it is now possible to provide remote learners with a common, standard, virtual laboratory and learning
environment, independent of the different types of physical machines on which they work. This greatly
enhances the opportunity for producing re-usable teaching materials that are actually re-used. However, configuring
and installing such virtual laboratories is technically challenging for teachers and students. We report
on our experience of building a virtual machine (VM) laboratory for a MOOC on relational databases. The
architecture of our virtual machine is described in detail, and we evaluate the benefits of using the Vagrant tool
for building and delive
ring the VM.
(More)