USABILITY AND INSTRUCTIONAL EXPERIENCE IN A
WEB-BASED REMOTE INTERNETWORKING
LABORATORY ENVIRONMENT
Shyamala Sivakumar
Sobey School of Business, Saint Mary's University, Halifax, Canada
William Robertson
Internetworking Program, Faulty of Engineering, Dalhousie University
Keywords: Remote internetworking laboratory, usability, student instructional experience.
Abstract: A web based remote Internetworking laboratory that delivers interactive laboratory experience to
geographically remote graduate students is presented in this paper. The online Internetworking (INWK)
laboratory learning environment employs remote interaction with networking equipment in both individual
and group setting that correlates with the constructivist and collaborative pedagogical approaches. This
paper discusses the pedagogical and technical factors that influence the usability of and instructional
experience in the remote laboratory environment given the constraints of the special hardware and learning
outcomes of the program. A survey instrument employing a 5 point scale has been devised to measure the
usability and student instructional experience in the remote access INWK laboratory. These results
demonstrate the success achieved in designing and implementing the remote access Internetworking
laboratory.
1 INTRODUCTION
Online student learning is made possible by
advancements in network infrastructure and
development of voice/multimedia protocols for
seamless transport of information. However, the
developer of a web based remote access laboratory
faces several challenges in designing an online
learning environment that ensures strong effective
interaction that best replaces the onsite face-to-face
interaction taking place in labs. This is exacerbated
in lab environments like those employed in
Internetworking (INWK) and Information Systems
(IS) courses which extensively use networking
hardware and computer/simulation software tools. In
addition to a clear understanding of the knowledge
domain requirements, the challenge is in supporting
good pedagogy and learning practices given
technical constraints with regard to bandwidth,
quality of service, real time interactions, and
multiple users (Sivakumar et al, 2005).
Remote laboratories have been successfully
used in electrical engineering education to interact
with spectroscopy, measurements, control systems
and simulation laboratories (Linge and Parsons,
2005) (Casini et al., 2003) (Zimmerli et al., 2003)
(Llamas et al., 2001) (Karampiperis and Sampson,
2005). However, none of these works addressed the
specific issues pertaining to pedagogy, facilitation,
scalability, usability and instructional experience
within a technical framework, other than mapping
the instructional content to appropriate technologies.
Although these experiences cannot be directly
applied to INWK laboratory, the essential elements
of improved learning spaces can be adapted to
develop an online learning space that is scalable,
accessible, interactive, and modular. An effective e-
learning laboratory design framework must employ
interactive laboratories, secure real-time student
interaction and incorporate effective online lab
learning strategies including appropriate pedagogy,
facilitation and skill building techniques to impart
knowledge and meet instructional outcomes. This
paper contributes to existing e-laboratory education
frameworks research by demonstrating the
feasibility of designing usable e-laboratory systems
for strong student instructional experience with
remote equipment. In this paper we describe our
172
Sivakumar S. and Robertson W. (2006).
USABILITY AND INSTRUCTIONAL EXPERIENCE IN A WEB-BASED REMOTE INTERNETWORKING LABORATORY ENVIRONMENT.
In Proceedings of WEBIST 2006 - Second International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies - Society, e-Business and
e-Government / e-Learning, pages 172-179
DOI: 10.5220/0001253701720179
Copyright
c
SciTePress
experiences in designing web-based remote
internetworking laboratory (RIL) that attempts to
incorporate all the qualities of an effective onsite
laboratory. This paper focuses on factors that affect
the usability of the RIL. In addition we also consider
factors that contribute to student’s instructional
experience. The paper is organized as follows:
Section 2 discusses the design requirements for the
remote internetworking laboratory. This section
outlines the reengineering of the internetworking
laboratory to enable students to interact online with
the remote devices in the Halifax equipment room.
Section 3 discusses the factors influencing the
usability and student instructional experience in the
RIL environment. Section 4 discusses a typical
instructional scenario in the RIL. Sections 5 and 6
present the usability and student instructional
measurements in the online RIL environment.
Section 7 compares the results for the onsite versus
the online scenarios. Section 8 presents conclusions.
2 DESIGN ISSUES IN THE RIL
In our previous research (Sivakumar and Robertson,
2004) we have developed a remote Internetworking
laboratory environment that supports text based
synchronous student interaction. The Faculty of
Engineering at Dalhousie University, Halifax,
Canada has been offering a Master’s degree program
in Internetworking since 1997. The program also
provides comprehensive “hands-on” laboratory
experience in configuring, maintaining,
troubleshooting and simulating computer networks.
In the online context, the design and the
implementation of an effective remote
internetworking laboratory (RIL) environment is
highly challenging on account of the special
hardware, simulation and computing needs of the
Internetworking courses. The internetworking
laboratory equipment consists of personal computers
(PC) and servers, networking devices including
routers and switches from vendors including Cisco
Systems and Nortel Networks, LAN/WAN network
analyzers, and network simulation software OPNET.
The networking equipment is placed on several
racks with each rack having an identical set of
routers, switches and hubs. The equipment consists
of Ethernet, token ring, frame relay (FR) and
asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) technologies.
The laboratory has access to a DMS-100 telephone
switch that provides ISDN and telephone
connections.
The onsite laboratory elements have been
translated into the online RIL environment by
allowing students at geographically remote sites to
access and interact with internetworking hardware,
simulators and software located at Halifax
laboratory facility and is shown in Figure 1. The
Internetworking laboratory network, INWKNet,
consists of a number of enterprise and carrier-level
internetworking devices such as routers and
switches. The backbone network consists of special
purpose devices that are commonly found in carrier
networks and is configured in a fixed topology. The
laboratory backbone is called the LabNet and
resembles a miniature “Internet” that is always
available to carry ATM, FR and Ethernet data
traffic. The other internetworking devices are
organized into a number of student racks, each
containing an identical set of devices to be accessed
by students and called the StudentNet. The
StudentNet devices are used to build topologies
similar to the topologies found in an enterprise
network. The INWKNet mimics a typical network
scenario where small enterprise LANs represented
by the StudentNet are connected to a carrier’s WAN
represented by the LabNet. The remote
Internetworking laboratory (RIL) is accessible by
remote students through the Internet. The onsite
internetworking laboratories have been redesigned
and the equipment rewired in a manner that allows
online students to construct different networks
topologies without changing the physical
wiring/cabling. The RIL is devised using de-facto
networking standards, free software and commercial
Internet browser. Real-time interaction and
information transfer with the Halifax site are
achieved independent of the technology available to
the remote student. The RIL design and delivery
mechanism are tailored to i) provide a constructivist
pedagogical approach (Palloff and Pratt, 2003) ii)
model a collaborative learning environment for
group interaction (Hiltz et al., 2000) iii) match the
characteristics of the delivery media to specific
learning processes including the provision of
unambiguous feedback and guidance iv) assign
appropriate instructional roles and v) determine
desirable student competency outcomes; all in a
remote learning context. A 4-tier RIL role
architecture consisting of faculty, facilitators at both
the Halifax and remote sites and students, has been
determined appropriate and adapted to maintain
academic integrity, provide continuous assessment
to track student performance, provide real-time
interaction with equipment, and offer strong student
instructional experience. The RIL is modeled as a
remote synchronous, collaborative and directed lear-
USABILITY AND INSTRUCTIONAL EXPERIENCE IN A WEB-BASED REMOTE INTERNETWORKING
LABORATORY ENVIRONMENT
173
Figure 1: RIL - Logical architecture.
ning environment as remote students interact
simultaneously with Internetworking equipment
under the active supervision and guidance of the
remote site facilitator to achieve specific learning
outcomes. The RIL limits individual access to
laboratory resources only to authenticated students
using an access control server. In this paper, our
work supports the special requirements for, and is
assessed for usability and student instructional
experience in this online synchronous INWK
laboratory framework.
3 FACTORS INFLUENCING RIL
USABILITY AND
INSTRUCTIONAL
EXPERIENCE
The e-learning research framework proposed by
Alavi and Leidner (Alavi and Leidner, 2001) urges
study within the context of pedagogical strategies
and learning processes. At the intersection of these
strategies and processes are the methods of
instructional delivery that can be viewed from
student-centric, university-centric and technology-
centric perspectives. E-learning system designers
and universities use these metrics to guide the
design, development/adoption and implementation
of learn-ware, assessment of trade-offs, e-learning
system infrastructure and to measure the usability of
the system. Specifically, issues in the design of the
pedagogical strategy that implements a student-
centric learning process in a web based remote
internetworking laboratory system must encourage
student interaction by employing state-of-the-art
networking equipment/simulators (Linge and
Parsons, 2005) (Llamas et al., 2001), provide real-
time response from equipment to engage students in
active learning, ensure repeat student interaction,
provide a collaborative learning environment for
group interaction at a remote site, provide feedback
and guidance when learning outcomes are not met
and, track student performance to meet learning
outcomes (Sivakumar et al, 2005).
The university-centric issues in implementing
instructional delivery methods include curriculum
quality, instructional pedagogy employed in the
remote laboratory, technical infrastructure
management for delivering learning material,
scalability of laboratory infrastructure to handle
increases in student enrolment, and continuous
student assessment for grading purposes (Sivakumar
et al, 2005)
From the technology-centric view point, the
instructional delivery framework must use standard
networking protocols and free software to connect
the remote site to the central equipment facility, use
secure interaction between the remote site and
equipment facility, deliver laboratory notes, wiring
information and diagrams to students at remote
locations over the world wide web, and authenticate
the student at the time of initial access to laboratory
resources (Sivakumar and Robertson, 2004).
A detailed study of the above factors is given in
(Sivakumar and Robertson, 2004) (Sivakumar et al,
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2005). The design of the remote internetworking
laboratory (RIL) is aimed at delivering an effective
remote laboratory experience moderated by the
laboratory facilitators.
4 RIL INSTRUCTIONAL
SCENARIO
In the RIL environment, students typically work in
groups of 2-3 per group in the introductory and
intermediate laboratory experiments. In advanced
laboratory experiments, they still have to configure
the networking equipment individually and then
have to interact as a group with the equipment. It is
essential that the remote site laboratory design
makes use of active learning strategies in a
collaborative environment (Palloff and Pratt, 2003)
(Hiltz et al., 2000) (Jonassen et al., 1999) (Wenger,
1998). The activities in the remote laboratory are
modeled to implement the nine instructional
objectives as outlined by Gagne et al. (Gagne et al.,
1992): 1) gain student attention, 2) inform students
of the objective, 3) recall prior learning, 4) present
stimuli, 5) provide learning guidance, 6) elicit
performance, 7) provide feedback, 8) assess
performance and 9) enhance retention. A typical
remote online INWK laboratory exercise requires
students to configure, analyze and troubleshoot the
performance of the routing information protocol
(RIP). Each group is assigned Internetworking
devices in the StudentNet (see Figure 1) for
configuration. The RIP experiment first requires
each student learn to configure RIP on a router.
Students capture and analyze the data packets using
sniffers or protocol analyzers. The convergence of
the RIP protocol is observed and analyzed by
capturing routing protocol updates after intentionally
generating a link failure event in the network. The
typical work scenario in this environment is
discussed in (Sivakumar and Robertson, 2004). All
necessary wiring needed for this exercise is made in
advance at the Halifax equipment facility. The
wiring diagrams for laboratory equipment is
available from the program website. In the following
sections we measure the usability and student
instructional experience in the RIL.
5 RIL USABILITY
The usability of an e-laboratory system is a function
of system design and is determined by factors
including ease of use, interactivity with the system,
system accessibility, system reliability, availability
of online help including lab handouts and wiring
diagram information, support for multiple
simultaneous interactions, system responsiveness,
appropriateness of system response to student input,
authenticity and state of art-ness of the networking
laboratory environment, feedback from the lab
instructor, and hands-on feeling. A survey
questionnaire that has been developed based on
these 12 issues is summarized in the Table 1.
Students were asked to respond on a five point
scale of 1-5, from very poor, poor, satisfactory, good
to very good, the usability of the online remote
equipment laboratory. The survey was conducted as
an anonymous post-course evaluation of the RIL
environment design, organization and performance.
Of a sample size of 83 students over 3 years (2004,
2005 and 2006), a total of 65 students took part
voluntarily in the survey once. In determining the
sample size the factors that played a major role are
the student enrolment in these years. On average, the
program intake consists of 28-30 students each year.
Table 2 gives the cumulative percentages of students
in these 3 years who rated the 12 different aspects of
the online lab as very good, good or satisfactory.
Table 3 gives the mean rating, the standard deviation
and confidence measure for the 12 aspects of the
remote laboratory. From Tables 2 and 3 it is seen
that the students are highly satisfied with the
technical design of the RIL environment as reflected
by the cumulative (2004, 2005 and 2006) results for
ease-of-use, response time, accessibility, reliability,
system response characteristics, authenticity, and the
“state-of-art”-ness of the equipment. Over 90% of
the students rated these technical characteristics of
the INWK networking equipment to be satisfactory,
good or very good. 87% of students rated the state-
of-art-ness of the networking environment to be
satisfactory or good or very good. Also, the students
are highly satisfied with the format of the online
wiring information and laboratory handouts as over
90% of students rated these to be satisfactory or
good or very good. The level of interactivity is
generally considered a key indicator of quality [20].
Tables 2 and 3 indicate that, although 83% of
students rated the interactivity with laboratory
components to be satisfactory or good or very good,
only 80% of students rated the level of “hands on”
feeling experienced in lab sessions to be satisfactory
or good or very good. Hence, the program needs to
improve student interactivity with laboratory
equipment and the “hands-on” feeling experienced
by the student to improve the quality of interaction
USABILITY AND INSTRUCTIONAL EXPERIENCE IN A WEB-BASED REMOTE INTERNETWORKING
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Table 1: Questionnaire used to measure the usability of the Remote Internetworking Laboratory.
On a scale of 1 to 5 rate: (1=Very poor, 2 = Poor, 3= Satisfactory, 4 = Good, 5= Very Good
UQ1 whether the INWK lab equipment was easy to use
UQ2 the level of interaction with lab components
UQ3 the response time of lab components
UQ4 Whether the switches, router and other networking gear could be remotely accessed on
entering userID/password)
UQ5 the reliability of operation of switches, router and other networking gear
UQ6 the appropriateness of the response from switches, routers and other networking gear i.e., did
the response from equipment help you better understand networking concepts and theories
UQ7 whether the feedback from the lab instructor was useful
UQ8 the usefulness of lab handouts and extra online information
UQ9 the usefulness of the online wiring diagram information (cabling between networking gear)
UQ10 the level of “hands on” feeling experienced when configuring/ troubleshooting networks with
equipment in Internetworking labs
UQ11 the authenticity of the networking environment in the INWK lab (i.e., is the networking
equipment used in the INWK labs similar to those in a real world networking environment)
UQ12 the “state-of-the-art”-ness of lab components / networking gear in the INWK lab (i.e., are the
router/switches and other networking gear current)
Table 2: Usability: Percentage of student vs. ratings.
Percentage of students who rated various aspects of the online labs as either very good (5),
good (4) or satisfactory (3)
Rating Years
Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5 Q6 Q7 Q8 Q9 Q10 Q11 Q12
2004
78.6 80.0 100 86.7 86.7 92.3 66.7 86.7 86.7 53.3 80.0 80.0
2004 and
2005 90.4 81.1 90.4 92.5 90.6 98.1 78.9 90.6 90.6 77.4 90.6 86.8
2004, 2005
and 2006
89.1 83.1 90.6 93.9 92.3 96.9 82.8 90.8 92.3 80.0 89.2 87.7
Table 3: Usability: Cumulative Mean, Standard Deviation and Confidence measures (2004, 2005 and 2006 data set).
Rating
Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5 Q6 Q7 Q8 Q9 Q10 Q11 Q12
Mean
3.61 3.34 3.66 4.14 3.85 3.81 3.45 3.72 3.74 3.37 3.58 3.45
Std. Deviation
0.95 1.00 0.88 0.93 0.83 0.75 1.13 0.98 0.92 1.15 0.92 0.87
95% CI
0.23 0.24 0.21 0.23 0.21 0.18 0.28 0.24 0.22 0.28 0.22 0.21
90% CI
0.20 0.20 0.18 0.19 0.17 0.15 0.23 0.20 0.19 0.24 0.19 0.18
Note: CI - Confidence interval
between the student and the equipment. Also, only
83% of students rated the feedback from the
laboratory facilitator to be satisfactory or good or
very good and this aspect showed the most
variability. The program needs to better train the
remote facilitator in providing timely and useful
feedback to the student.
6 INSTRUCTIONAL
EXPERIENCE
As part of this study, students were asked to rate
their instructional experience in the RIL. The student
learning experience measures student perceptions
regarding their level of confidence and the increase
in the student’s ability to configure, trouble shoot,
monitor, design, implement, plan and manage a
state-of-the-art networking environment. In addition,
student’s perception regarding their ability to
understand and apply internetworking concepts and
select appropriate technology was also measured. A
student instructional experience survey
questionnaire that has been developed based on
these 10 issues is summarized in Table 4. Students
were asked to respond on a five point scale of 1-5,
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from very poor, poor, satisfactory, good to very
good, to rate the student instructional experience in
the RIL. Of a sample size of 55 (37 students in 2005
and 18 students in 2006), a total of 42 students (30
in 2005 and 12 in 2006) took part voluntarily in the
student instructional experience survey once. Table
5 gives the cumulative percentages of students in the
two years who rated the 10 different aspects of the
student instructional experience in the RIL as very
good, good or satisfactory. Table 6 gives the mean
rating, the standard deviation and confidence
measure for these 10 student instructional
experience issues. From Tables 5 and 6 it is seen that
the students rated their instructional experience as
highly satisfactory. From Table 5, it is seen that
about 70% of the students found a good or very
good increase in their level of confidence in working
with Internetworking equipment. Also, over 90% of
the students rated a satisfactory, good or very good
increase in their understanding of concepts, ability to
configure equipment, application of theoretical
concepts, selection of appropriate technology, and
plan and implement networks. Over 80% of the
students rated a satisfactory, good or very good
increase in their ability to trouble shoot, monitor,
manage, and design networks.
7 ONLINE VS. ONSITE LABS
Onsite students were asked to respond on a five
point scale of 1-5, from very poor, poor, satisfactory,
good to very good, the following aspects of the
onsite equipment laboratory: the physical access to
equipment, suitability of the networking equipment,
their experience using the lab and whether the lab
helped them understand networking concepts better.
Specific questions of the online survey were more
detailed and refined than that of the onsite survey.
Table 4: Questionnaire used to measure the instructional experience in the RIL.
On a scale of 1 to 5 rate: (1=Very poor, 2 = Poor, 3= Satisfactory, 4 = Good, 5= Very Good) the
extent to which the INWK laboratory learning experience has increased
IQ1 your overall level of confidence in working with INWK equipment
IQ2 your understanding of INWK theories, concepts and technologies
IQ3 your ability to configure equipment
IQ4 your ability to troubleshoot networks
IQ5 your ability to monitor networks
IQ6 your ability to design networks
IQ7 your ability to implement networks
IQ8 your ability to apply theoretical networking concepts
IQ9 your ability to select appropriate networking technologies
IQ10 your ability to plan and manage networks
Table 5: Student instructional experience: Percentage of student vs. ratings.
Percentage of students who rated various aspects of the online instructional
experience as either very good (5), good (4) or satisfactory (3)
Rating
IQ1 IQ2 IQ3 IQ4 IQ5 IQ6 IQ7 IQ8 IQ9 IQ10
Very Good
11.9 19.1 12.2 4.9 7.3 2.4 4.9 17.1 7.5 2.5
Very Good or Good
69.1 71.4 73.2 48.8 43.9 34.2 43.9 73.2 57.5 37.5
Very Good or Good or
Satisfactory 95.2 90.4 97.6 87.8 87.8 85.3 87.8 95.1 92.5 90.0
Table 6: Student instructional experience: Mean, Standard Deviation and Confidence measures.
Rating
IQ1 IQ2 IQ3 IQ4 IQ5 IQ6 IQ7 IQ8 IQ9 IQ10
Mean
3.76 3.81 3.83 3.39 3.37 3.20 3.32 3.85 3.58 3.30
Standard Deviation
0.73 0.86 0.67 0.83 0.86 0.78 0.88 0.76 0.75 0.69
95% CI
0.22 0.26 0.20 0.25 0.26 0.24 0.27 0.23 0.23 0.21
90% CI
0.18 0.22 0.17 0.21 0.22 0.20 0.22 0.20 0.19 0.18
Note: CI - Confidence interval
USABILITY AND INSTRUCTIONAL EXPERIENCE IN A WEB-BASED REMOTE INTERNETWORKING
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177
Table 7: Onsite issues and their correspondence to online usability measures.
Onsite Survey Online Survey
Issue Onsite
Issue no.
Issues Question no.
(See Table 2, 5)
“Hands on feeling” UQ10 Physical access to equipment in
laboratory
OQ1
Student interactivity with equipment UQ2
Authenticity UQ11 Suitability of networking
equipment
OQ2
State-of-art ness UQ12
Ease of use UQ1
Response time UQ3
Remote access to lab UQ4
Experience using the lab OQ3
Reliability UQ5
Understand networking concepts OQ4 Understand INWK theories, concepts
and technologies
IQ2
Note: UQ: usability questionnaire. IQ: instructional experience questionnaire, OQ: onsite questionnaire
Table 8: Onsite vs. Online Surveys (2004, 2005, 2006): Mean, Standard Deviation and Confidence measures.
Onsite On line
Measure
OQ1 OQ2 OQ3 OQ4 UQ2, UQ10 UQ11, UQ12 UQ1, UQ3, UQ4, UQ5 IQ2
Mean 3.87 3.97 3.57 3.97 3.35 3.52 3.81 3.81
SD 0.86 0.98 1.22 1.07 1.08 0.89 0.92 0.86
CI – 95% 0.31 0.36 0.44 0.38 0.19 0.15 0.11 0.26
Note: CI – Confidence Interval
However, as shown in Table 7 the four onsite issues
can be mapped to one or more corresponding online
questions to enable comparison.
Table 8 lists the mean, standard deviation and
confidence measures for the four onsite issues used
to measure the design and implementation of the
onsite laboratory and compares it with the
corresponding figures for the online laboratory.
From Table 8, it is seen that on average, onsite
students are more satisfied with the physical
accessibility to the equipment than their online
counterparts. Similarly, students in the onsite
program are more aware of the suitability of the
networking equipment employed in the labs. The
online students consistently rated the authenticity
and the state-of-art ness of the networking
environment lower than their onsite counterparts.
Also, the onsite students were marginally more
satisfied than the online students when asked
whether the laboratory equipment helped them
understand networking concepts better. However,
the online students were more satisfied with their
online laboratory experience than the onsite students
and this may be attributed to the flexibility that the
remote access provides to online students. For
example, online students can access the laboratory at
a time and from a place convenient to them and
perform the labs at a suitable pace.
8 CONCLUSIONS
This paper describes an online remote
internetworking laboratory (RIL) environment used
to deliver remote laboratory experience by allowing
students at geographically remote sites to access and
utilize devices including routers, switches, LAN
analyzers, and simulators located at Halifax. In the
early stages, much of the development of the remote
internetworking laboratory, has focused on
understanding the system requirements and
developing a viable test-bed to deliver the labs
online by connecting students at remote sites to
internetworking equipment at Halifax. The RIL
system design ensures an accessible, reliable, easy-
to-use and responsive remote laboratory
environment that supports multiple simultaneous
real-time interactions and effective information
transfer between the remote site and the equipment
at the Halifax equipment facility. The RIL uses
effective student interaction with remote equipment
and simulations that employ multimedia to create an
engaging environment that enhances problem-
solving skills. This is reflected by highly satisfactory
ratings for the student instructional measures.
Survey results used to measure the usability of the
remote laboratory demonstrate the success achieved
in designing and implementing the remote access
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Internetworking laboratory. Survey results also
indicate that the online laboratory is perceived to be
easier to use and more flexible than the onsite
laboratory due to the formers remote access
capability. However, the online laboratory is
perceived to be less physically accessible and less
interactive than the onsite laboratory. Based on the
feedback from the faculty who have been involved
both in the onsite and the online programs and the
students’ historical performance measures including
grades, switching to the online remote laboratory
format has not resulted in any degradation of the
expected learning outcomes.
Future research will focus on evaluating how the
facilitation process together with system use result in
achieving the pedagogical goals of the program.
System limitations include the fact that the current
INWK laboratory can accommodate only 35
students maximum in a given time slot. The long-
term goal of the program is to implement an
asynchronous internetworking laboratory accessible
from the student’s home. Additional work is planned
to address online facilitation and student
instructional experience in the asynchronous
environment.
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