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Michael Rees 1 4 June 2009
Teaching Information Technology Subjects with Real-WorldSoftware
The Virtual Information Technology Teaching Laboratory
Michael J ReesSchool of IT, Bond Universitymrees@bond.edu.au
Abstract
Hitherto it has been extremely difficult if not impossible to set practical assignments for advancedinformation technology (IT) subjects since the software interferes with the operation of the BondUniversity network. Dedicated computer teaching laboratories are set aside to support a range of operating systems and specialised software (platforms). Very special platform setups have beennecessary each semester to allow a single physical workstation to support multiple uses. Even thenthe platforms interfere and the students cannot be granted administrative access to allow them toinstall and manage their software. When not required by IT students the teaching laboratories lieidle.The Virtual IT Teaching Laboratory (VITTL) project is managed by the author and uses advancedvirtualisation technology and central servers. IT students are allocated individual virtual machinesfor each subject that requires them. Virtual machines run on a 24/7 basis and students can be givenfull administrative privileges to install and manage complex software just as in the real world.Students can then access their own virtual machine(s) from any standard computer on campus, andtheir own laptop connected via the Internet.This advanced virtualisation technology allows Bond IT students to gain experience with advancedsoftware, servers and systems required by employers and this better fits them for careers in the ITindustry.
Background
Over the last two decades the author has a consistent record of applying his knowledge of softwarepackages to enhance teaching and learning at Bond. His teaching philosophy embodies thediscovery and application of educational technology to empower IT students when they graduate.
Teaching Philosophy
The author was a foundation staff member of Bond when teaching began in 1989. He was part of the initial decision by the then School of Information & Computing Sciences to concentrate uponthe application of IT so that students would acquire professional development skills in software andsystems that would make them attractive to employers in the IT industry. As well as a googgrounding in fundamental IT theory the aim is to teach the processes and experience of IT systemsto provide solutions to real-world problems.Bond IT staff have always treated this as very important goal and have striven to design andimplement suitable practical assignments to this end. This has required staff to spend aconsiderable fraction of their time to become familiar with leading-edge software that is beingproduced by the IT industry. Often this experience is gained from research projects and consultingundertaken with companies at the local, national and international levels. The students in advancedIT subjects then gain the benefit of this experience.
 
Michael Rees 2 4 June 2009
Software Support for Practical Assignments
The practical assignments for introductory IT subjects in programming and data manipulation canoften use straightforward, stand-alone software packages that run on the standard operatingenvironment (SOE) chosen by most educational institutions including Bond. Some entry-levelsubjects in networking and web site development can be configured to use shared servers underthe control of the teaching staff. Nevertheless even the whole range of introductory software mustbe included in the SOE and even these simple packages must be tested extensively andinterference problems solved. Each semester, which is three times a year at Bond, teachers andtechnical staff must go through a lengthy process to ensure adequate software packages areavailable for IT teaching.Many large IT companies such as IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and Cisco grant educational institutionsvery attractive licences, sometimes at no cost, to allow their software to be used for IT teaching.This software is in widespread use by enterprises of all sizes across the world. Provided the softwarecan sensibly be integrated into our advanced IT subjects it allows the teaching staff to introducereal-world experience. Using this commercial software allows the students to gain access tovaluable experiential learning of direct benefit to them and their employers in their future careers.Following a noticeable trend in the computing industry a number of staff make use of open sourcesoftware platforms, usually variants of the Linux operating system and the large body of opensource software packages and servers available for this platform. While the software is available atno charge it must run on dedicated workstations both in the teaching laboratories and staff offices.Again the Linux platform is quite separate from the SOE and to date requires the platform to run inone or more specialist teaching laboratories only available to IT students.Increasingly the software packages needed for the advanced IT subjects grow more complexputting high demands on the computer workstations, and, more importantly, need specialised,potentially unsafe network access and require students to have administrator access. Grantingadministrator access obviously opens the possibility of a student inadvertently deletingcomponents or corrupting the software platform. Thus the next student finds the workstationunusable. Similarly network security is paramount and the ability to configure the Bond networkcannot be granted under any circumstance. The end effect is that use of the software, common inthe IT industry, is denied to teaching staff who would like to base the practical assignments in anindustry context and allow students to gain development experience of real-world solutions.In summary, the specialist software problem for supporting practical assignments in advanced ITsubjects is:1.
 
Students are denied permanent, administrator access preventing software install andconfiguration.2.
 
Long, complex workstation image setup process involving teaching staff and centraltechnical staff for each semester; limited platform support and interference problemsusually lead to further compromises.3.
 
Specialist computer teaching laboratories are needed for IT students alone leading tounder-utilisation; other problems include partitioning labs by workstation and/or limitingstudents to a single physical machine that may fail.4.
 
Shared workstations or laboratory access limitations prevent 24/7 use of specialistsoftware.5.
 
No access from their place of residence; this is important for IT students who may haveto spend long periods of development/debugging to complete some practicalassignmentsThis multi-faceted problem has existed at Bond and other universities for a number of years despitethe best efforts of the central technical support services to provide realistic teaching softwareenvironments. The constraints of the network security policies and SOE usually intervene and theproblem persists.
 
Michael Rees 3 4 June 2009
Solving the Specialist Software Problem
Much of the complex workstation image problem can be solved if it were possible to install onesoftware package per machine, and have the student use just that machine for a particular class.Unfortunately the economics of higher education mean that there are too few physical machines toallow the one-machine-per-class solution. However, the availability of virtualisation technologyoffers the possibility of creating as many virtual machines as required and a potential solution tothe one-machine-per-class problem.
Characteristics of a Virtual Machine
Three years ago the author was awarded a School of IT research grant of a central server on whichto investigate the benefits of the relatively new
virtualisation technology 
which supports thecreation and execution of 
virtual machines
. The
host machine
, in this case the central server, runsspecial virtualisation software that allows several virtual machines (sometimes called guestmachines) to run at the same time. Each virtual machine is allocated virtual devices such processor,memory, hard disk, network adapter, screen, keyboard, mouse and USB ports to take a typicalexample. With these features a virtual machine can run any operating system of choice, and thenany specialist software packages can be installed to run under that (virtual) operating system. Inprinciple one host machine can run several virtual machines supporting a whole range of differentplatforms (operating system-specialist software combinations) as required.Virtual machine creation and execution software was freely available from Microsoft at the time andthe author built a variety of virtual machines based on Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 andLinux. A range of other software was then installed on these base virtual machines. Examplesincluded web browsers like Firefox, Opera and Safari, interactive development environments (IDEs)such as Visual Studio and Eclipse, web servers like IIS and Apache, database servers like SQL Serverand MySQL, content management systems like SharePoint Server and several other dedicatedservers and software development tools. These are all platforms that are used in the teaching of advanced IT subjects at Bond. The feasibility of using virtual machines to support platforms neededfor teaching was proved.Once built a virtual machine:
 
is represented as a collection of files in a folder that holds the virtual machine state(contents of memory and hard disks)
–
a
snapshot 
; the snapshot can be copied to createany number of snapshots and new clones of the virtual machine; the snapshot can also betransferred to a different host machine
 
offers a virtual desktop mirroring completely a real desktop that can be accessed fromany standard computer, either on campus or off, given suitable network permissions
 
can be started and shutdown from the host machine using the virtualisation software;when shutdown the capacity of the virtual devices and network can be adjusted from thehost
–
flexible virtual machine capacity
 
runs on a 24/7 basis until explicitly shut down even when a user logs off; this allows longrunning programs like servers and compute-intensive software to be supportedShould a virtual machine be damaged by a student (or a staff member for that matter) such that itwill not reboot or execute correctly it can be discarded and replaced by another snapshot in a veryshort time. Ostensibly this provides an unlimited supply of virtual machines. This opens the door toan exciting array of trial-and-error experiments with new software and new software combinations.
The Virtual Teaching Laboratory
It was apparent that it would be possible to allocate one or more virtual machines to each student.Each class could build a virtual machine on a specific platform to suit exactly the practicalassignments for that class. In principle no specialist teaching laboratories would be needed sincestudents could connect any workstation on campus running the SOE to the virtual machines fortheir classes. What would be required is an infrastructure of central servers to act as host machinesfor the expected high numbers of virtual machines.
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