[PROJECT WRITE-UP MINUS THE LEARNING OUTCOMES CHART]
Project Design
Below is the descriptive design response which is based in design principles using “an iterative dialogic structure that enables students to learn, but also enables teachers and the system to learn as well” (Laurillard, pp. 9-10).
The project is designed to tap into student’s current knowledge and experience and by the end of the project tests deep, conceptual understanding. Formative assessments, designed by the students, will provide an opportunity to reveal how they are thinking.
Plenty of scaffolding is in place from previous projects. This project enhances their knowledge by keeping the students within their zone of proximal development (ZPD). Through the use of intrinsic feedback (group monitoring and testing for completion of a task) and breaking the problem into manageable pieces (milestones) the students will realize when each realize when each requirement has been achieved.
New examples are provided along with references to previous examples for students to recognize the contrast with previous work. Working in a group will help to foster conversational learning.
Finally students will have many opportunities to reveal metacognition. First, as mentioned above, they will develop their own testing practices to reveal completeness of the process at each milestone. Further, they will engage in a friendly competition to fix a sabotaged environment where their understanding of the process and troubleshooting skills will be tested on an unrehearsed video. Afterward, teams can share knowledge about individual and
group metacognitive practices.
Analysis Phase
Many times students experience networking concepts from the position of participating in an existing network infrastructure. While they may possess a fundamental understanding of the design, there are certain aspects still vague or missing from the complete understanding. This project will help to further the deeper understanding of networking concepts in a virtualized, enterprise VMware environment.
While students in the operating systems class make use of the routed networking environment, they do not have an opportunity to see deeper into the inner workings. This project offers an opportunity to build their own routed networking environment with the following outcomes:
- Work in a collaborative space.
- Design a small IP address space.
- Build virtual network infrastructure.
- Create virtual objects that provide formative assessment tools to confirm completed milestones.
- Demonstrate learning by applying concepts to repair a broken environment.
- Understand metacognition through interactions with others.
Students (re)entering the IT workforce need to possess a deeper understanding of the underlying technology. Too often, students enter the workforce with a potential arsenal of how to perform tasks, but often lack the understanding of why they work. Worse yet, they may not know how to fix problems that arise.
The goal of this project is to make the process less mechanical (do this, then this, then this) and more cognitive (without this, the next step fails because…or I cannot skip this step since it connects me to the network.).
Ultimately the student should understand how each step interconnects and why they collectively make the overall solution work. It is okay to recognize that there are gaps in understanding. This is also common in the workplace – no one starts a job knowing everything. Since the project involves the use of team collaboration, the students will quickly learn that they need to work together. It is necessary for students to recognize the importance of collaborative projects since they will often be put in situations that require them to interact with others, present solutions and listen to the solutions of others. This does not mean that differences of opinion are to be avoided. In fact, this is encouraged as long as everyone conducts themselves in a professional and courteous manner.
Design Phase
The collaborative component of this project will be new for students at this point in the course. All previous work by the students will have been done individually. This means that they all bring varying skills and understanding when beginning this project. This is intended to be a characteristic that will be unifying within the group fostering a creative interplay between members.
The design of the supporting content centers around the use of:
- A working prototype.
- A complete instructor authored project specification.
- Instructor authored documentation in WordPress.
- Student assessment warehousing in Blackboard.
- Instructor authored videos in YouTube.
Students arriving at this project have experience in the VMware web interface. They have previously created several virtual machines in this space. The have completed basic networking configurations in each virtual machine. Therefore, upon seeing the requirements for the project, they will immediately identify the components in which they are already familiar thereby encouraging them to complete those pieces with confidence so they can arrive at the point of creating the new content and integrating it into their existing knowledge.
The working prototype, along with a YouTube video, will show students a working finished product. The video will only demonstrate end-to-end connectivity and completeness of the solution. It will not delve into the problems the students are intended to solve through the group activities.
The students will have view-only capabilities within the environment, but no ability to clone it. Cloning is a feature of VMware for rapid development of larger infrastructures by way of rapid duplication of existing objects.
The learning environment will continue to be the VMware vCenter web interface using standard web browsers. This is the environment in which students are already familiar.
Note that Blackboard is only being used as a means to deliver a calendar, grades for completed work and to collect written journals and group authored video links. All other details are in WordPress with work being conducted in VMware vCenter.
Development Phase
Provided Materials
The instructor will provide all necessary materials in the form of:
- Written specifications and resources available on WordPress.
- Video resources on YouTube. Links provided in WordPress.
- VMware vCenter as the main development arena.
Recommended Materials
As the project develops, the students will need to find ways to interact with each other. Tools to assist in online collaboration include:
- Sharepoint: students can share a Word document to provide a central means of feedback, checklists or simply keeping a log of what steps have been completed, when they were completed and, if appropriate, who verified the work.
- Skype, Zoom: these tools could be used for video conferencing.
- Discord: this online collaboration tool is mainly used for text-based communication much like IRC.
- Jing, Camtasia: students will need to capture live video at a few key points along the way regardless of the teaching modality.
Instrutor’s Role
The role of the instructor is to be as hands-off as possible and allow the team to develop its cohesion. However, the instructor should always be available to answer questions, remind students of the resources available and to provide technical support as needed.
Interaction Phase
Team Collaboration
Students will be grouped into teams. As they progress through each component of the overall project, they will have direct interaction with the web-based VMware environment. Each team will have a virtual network switch provided to them in VMware. All work will be done within the VMware environment.
Faculty Support
The interaction with instructor will vary, however, the instructor is encouraged to interact in such a way as to guide the student toward the answer. This is most often done by asking them questions about their design thus far, thereby having them review the list of details and milestones they know to be true at that time. The intent is to encourage a dialog/discussion/debate rather than a lecture. Follow up question can be made by the instructor as needed to help guide them, but never to simply hand over the answer.
Milestone Evaluation
The project is designed in multiple divisions. These divisions are arranged as milestones. These milestones are the achievements at each major step of the implementation. Since the design is relatively linear, there is often little deviation from the process that can be allowed. Students will demonstrate their achievement of the learning outcomes at each point.
As a final test to confirm the completion of each milestone, the team will assemble their own series of checklist verification tests to confirm the milestone is complete. They can, of course, obtain assistance from the instructor if they are not certain the tests are sufficient. This should be made clear by the instructor that said assistance should be sought after they have sufficiently exhausted their own knowledge base.
Evaluation Phase
Reflective Journals
Throughout the milestones of the project, students will complete reflective journal entries in Blackboard. These are intended as a recap of the most recent milestone. They are to provide details of missteps and how they were resolved. They must provide individual accounts of the work performed as a group. This will allow each member of the team to assess how they view the work done. Optionally, they can share these details after they have submitted their journal for grading.
Team Video
The final piece of the group project will involve the group creating a 5-7 minute video where they demonstrate all of the pieces of their completed project. They must demonstrate mastery of terminology, names of components, mastery of the addressing scheme and visual demonstration of its completeness. All team member must participate equally in the video.
Final Evaluation
As a follow-up to their completed collaborative project, they will then be tested with a previously working model that was sabotaged by an opposing team and/or the instructor, depending on the number of teams or other factors.
Each team will then begin a video capture of an UNREHEARSED attempt at a solution to bring the environment back into working order. There will be an appropriate time limit set. There will have been 3 to 5 problems setup in the previously working environment. The purpose is to have the team demonstrate:
- VMware problem solving skills.
- Network problem solving skills.
- Ability to work as a team.
- Ability to assess if the problem exists at the:
- VMware network switch.
- Virtual machine network adapter.
- Operating system network configuration. (addressing, masks, gateways, NAT translation, firewalls).
- Ability to assist, encourage and remediate fellow team members as needed and if applicable.
- Ability to arrive at a solution to the problem which is potentially out of order compared to the linear project model they already completed.
This will encourage the ability of team members to evaluate the metacognition of themselves and team members. In addition, this can be used for teams to evaluate each other’s metacognition. By reviewing the videos of the trouble-shooting processes used by both teams, they can learn more about:
- How they think.
- Identify strengths and areas of improvement.
- Recognize why certain troubleshooting approaches were more fruitful than others.
- Adjust processes for future investigations.
Link to the project specification.
References
Laurillard, D. (2012). Teaching as a Design Science: Building Pedagogical Patterns for Learning and Technology. London: Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.