Teaching Online Computer-Science Courses in LMS and Cloud Environment

Abstract

The author shares his experiences teaching various online computer-science courses (via the Canvas™ and synchronous web conferencing tools) using state-of-the-art free-license software tools for conducting online virtual labs and numerous students' projects. The labs were designed to help students explore modern, sophisticated techniques in several areas of computer science: computer-system analysis and design, programming in C/C++ and Java, software quality assurance, data communication in networking systems, computer security, system simulation and modeling, numerical analysis, image processing, multimedia applications, Web development, and database design and management. All the online courses include “warm-up” exercises and lab-based projects that provide students with knowledge, instructions, and hands-on experience, and that motivate them in selecting topics for technology overviews and research. To concentrate mostly on the students' hands-on training, the “flipped classroom” pedagogy and individual or team tutoring were used in the online classes. The preventive strategies on plagiarism and cheating among students were developed and successfully implemented in the virtual classroom using the Cloud environment.

Challenges and Strategies for Online Teaching in Information Technology and Other Computing Programs

“…Instructors also face difficulties in coordinating teams and group projects, which constitute a critical part of learning in IT and other computing courses [11]. We know that students learn best when they work in a collaborative and interactive setting, and that translates to heavy use of group projects and other group work.…”

“…The primary dilemma that arises in providing online programming courses in a LMS environment is whether to use an Interactive Development Editor (IDE) or an intelligent editor that incorporates the operating system's command-line interface [11]. This is because while both provide unique benefits to students, IDEs provide a better environment for the development of code in general, but they are usually more complex for beginners, hence increasing learning difficulty for some students.…”

Experiences in Python Programming Laboratory for Civil Engineering Students With Online Collaborative Programming Platform

“…Visual Paradigm tool is employed to conduct virtual laboratory sessions for online courses in learning software programming subjects, where students can build diagrams by using the Unified Modeling Language approach [15]. Student are asked to share their Cloud workspaces to their lecturers, such that the lecturers can see the progression of students' work [16]. A web-based integrated development environment (IDE), named Collabode is utilized for collaborative software development, by enabling multiple software programmers to share their programming codes immediately, which allows for more than one active programming contributor to the same piece of codes [17].…”