VIDUCATION: ANIMATED VIDEOS FOR CLOUD COMPUTING EDUCATION

The concept of using the cloud to store data is now a common practice for people within education, thanks to software applications namely, OneDrive and Dropbox, and other external cloud-based storage systems such as AmazonWS.

While the concept of using cloud storage systems is simple, the teaching of the underpinning methods of cloud-based systems to students, who are inexperienced in this area, is more complex. In the higher education context, cloud computing has emerged rapidly into a subject of importance due to mass-market interest. Currently, the word “cloud” in relation to “computing” is a part of everyday parlance – with industry, government, and other sectors at various stages of cloud adoption. With a clear demand from industry for staff with “cloud knowledge and skills”, the need to provide effective teaching materials for students is essential. Nonetheless, there is very little educational material (technical and practical) and associated tools that help bridge the gap for students to understand how cloud computing works. Many current teaching materials are more theoretical than practical, which removes the crucial critical engagement from the learning process. Also, the current methods of teaching cloud computing lack visual understanding, which then results in teachers having to spend a significant amount of time during a lecture explaining each specific component of cloud computing, and leaving students to visualize the components.

In this paper, we present “ViDucation”, a set of animated videos, to assist with the delivery of cloud computing in an academic and educational way. It provides a visual aid and a more direct view of what goes on behind the scenes of cloud computing. The key aim of this work is to bridge the gap of visual understanding and show students how cloud computing works in conjunction with all of its components in an effective and easy-to-understand approach, which also allows teachers to deliver material in a more academic and successful way. In addition, this paper uses a real-world data center at a large UK University as a case study to help to understand how students adopted proposed technology. It provides an in-depth knowledge of how the data center works enabling students to gain a deeper familiarization via rich media content, which will help strengthen the learning process.