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

 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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