Abstract:

This paper studies the suitability of moving a computing project as an assessment method from on–campus to an online environment. This study is driven by the availability of technology that makes learning more accessible through an online environment. The paper considers four computing courses at different levels that use projects to measure the student's achievement of the course learning outcomes. These projects are IS Application project at level 5; AWS, Linux, internship and group project at level 6; network projects at level 7 and level 8. The factors considered for this study are the technical feasibility of delivering these projects in an online environment and soft skills including communication, time management, adaptability and flexibility.

The projects are evaluated using the factors mentioned above and classified into four categories – no changes, minor changes, major changes and no delivery. No changes means that the project is suitable for the online environment as it is. For minor changes some aspects of the project were redesigned, while for major changes the core aspects of the project were redesigned. No delivery means that the project is not suitable for the online environment. In level 6 AWS project we found that there were no changes needed to move to an online environment because AWS itself is a web service, which can be accessed from anywhere. The same applies to level 6 Linux project where students need to build a network of two machines and practice network services. Students have been doing this in a virtual platform (i.e., Oracle VBox or VMware) without putting too much load on their personal machines. Minor changes are introduced when moving level 5 IS application project to the online environment. One scenario is to divide the group work into individual parts and allocate them to specific students. However, this change will compromise the achievement of one of the course learning outcomes related to communication. An alternative approach is to use online collaboration tools for group work to keep communication open among the group members. Major changes are needed for Level 6 group project where students need to build a network using physical devices. To move this project to an online environment a virtual platform is used to replace the real devices. However, the technical requirements are compromised because the virtual platform is on a single host and cannot handle the load. In addition, students will also lose the opportunity to have hands-on experience using real devices. A similar scenario applied to level 7 and level 8 network projects. No changes were possible to level 6 internship as it is industry based and students need to be present on-site under their allocated industry supervisor.

In conclusion, it is possible to move the majority of the projects to the online environment with suitable changes without compromising the core requirements. We will unpack this argument in depth in this paper and discuss in more detail the type of changes introduced in each of these project assessments.

Keywords:

Computing projects, On-campus delivery, online environment.