Abstract:

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, remote working and learning have seen unprecedented growth in popularity and adoption in both industrial and educational settings.

This poses unique challenges to all sectors, including the education sector, in all aspects of delivery and engagement. This includes how to effectively deliver practical-based training and education to learners who, by virtue of their mode of study and circumstances, are unable to attend traditional university campuses, and, as such, are unable to access university infrastructure, technology, and equipment.

This issue is particularly problematic in relation to the teaching of technical subjects such as cybersecurity, and associated sub-domains such as ethical hacking, penetration testing, and operating system security, however, the problem also extends to technical computing topics such as virtualisation.

There are multiple examples of third-party companies offering cloud-based solutions to these issues, however, these solutions come with their own difficulties in adoption, such as cost, adaptability, and customer response times. There are also challenges in relation to understanding the function of the systems when the backend design and function are treated as trade secrets.

In addition to these challenges, the further education sector in the UK is undergoing a period of unparalleled change and uncertainty, which result in difficulties in funding for solutions, as well as a need to broaden their offerings and modes to include far more than the traditional on-campus learning structures and opportunities.

In working to combine these elements and concerns, we present an in-house manageable solution for the delivery of remote desktops and infrastructure to a wide variety of students across a range of modes and modules, and at various levels of study. This work includes technical considerations as well as access considerations to ensure a suitable technical solution, as well as considering the cost aspects of the solution to ensure a solution that has the longevity to provide consistent use against investment. We also consider the effectiveness of the solution as a pedagogical tool for delivering technical information and experience to remote learners.

The results of the work show that the solution implemented achieves the given metrics of being easy to access for students, providing a safe and secure remote learning environment for students to study the more hostile red-team aspect of cybersecurity, as well as giving a suitable and flexible environment for the study of technical computing modules such as operating systems and virtualisation.

Additionally, when compared to third party providers, the solution shows affordability to institutions while maintaining a high cost-to-return ratio on infrastructure investment from the owning organisation. The results also highlight high levels of student satisfaction, giving modules and courses that make use of the solution's viability and credibility in the changing further education landscape.

This work would be particularly useful for practitioners in higher and further education environments, or any pedagogical facilitator with students requiring technical and practical instruction while being in the remote or blended learning domain.

Keywords:

Practical training, remote learning, blended learning, cybersecurity, virtualisation, ethical hacking, innovation, development.