Author:
Nane Kratzke
Affiliation:
Lübeck University of Applied Sciences, Germany
Keyword(s):
Cloud, Computing, Virtual Labs, Higher Education, IaaS, Decision, Making, Cost, Estimation.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Computer-Supported Education
;
Cooperation with Industry in Teaching
;
e-Learning
;
e-Learning in Electrical, Mechanical, Civil and Information Engineering
;
e-Learning Success Cases
;
Social Context and Learning Environments
;
Ubiquitous Learning
;
Virtual Labs and Virtual Classrooms
Abstract:
Cost efficiency is an often mentioned strength of cloud computing (Talukader et al., 2010). In times of decreasing educational budgets virtual labs provided by cloud computing might be an interesting alternative for higher education organizations or IT training facilities. This contribution analyzes the cost advantage of virtual educational labs provided via cloud computing means and compare these costs to costs of classical educational labs provided in a dedicated manner. This contribution develops a four step decision making model which might be interesting for colleges, universities or other IT training facilities planning to implement cloud based training facilities. Furthermore this contribution provides interesting findings when cloud computing has economical advantages in education and when not. The developed four step decision making model of general IaaS applicability can be used to find out whether an IaaS cloud based virtual IT lab approach is more cost efficient than a d
edicated approach.
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