Learning in the Cloud: An Experiment in the Virtual
Classroom
Bernard Rosell, Shiven Kumar, Lukas Vlahos
brosell@att.com
shiven.kumar@att.com
lvlahos343@gmail.com
Abstract— Cloud computing promises to deliver both computing
resources and immediate access to applications with minimal
management required of the end user. However, even more
promising is the way in which the cloud may facilitate
collaboration between individuals, teams and organizations. It is
in this area that the cloud may prove to be a powerful tool for the
learning process for education is at its heart collaboration. In
this paper we discuss an experiment we conducted to simulate a
classroom environment using only resources available from the
cloud. In addition to validating the feasibility of creating a
virtual classroom we found emergent properties of the simulation
that created learning situations that we did not expect and that
are not readily recreated in the traditional physical classroom we
are all familiar with.
A business can start small with practically no assets but a
great idea and through the cloud create a virtual infrastructure
that scales with the success of their enterprise. This gives the
end user a great deal of financial flexibility.
This is not to say that there are no disadvantages to the
cloud model. Consider that the only way to take advantage of
the resources it holds is though the internet and your
enterprise is therefore completely dependent on your access
network. Fortunately these concerns can be addressed. For
example, redundant connectivity can solve the isolation
problem. More critical though is the bandwidth issue,
especially as we move to a wireless infrastructure.
The increasing adoption of smart phones and internet/ WiFi
enabled tablets will allow immediate and ubiquitous access to
Keywords— Cloud Computing, Web based learning, K-12,
the rich resource within the cloud and necessarily require high
Virtual environments, collaboration, educational adjunct
bandwidth between the subscriber and the network.
Fortunately, in addition to computing power, Moore’s law
I. INTRODUCTION
generalizes to storage and telecommunications. Edholm’s law
There may be almost as many definitions of Cloud [6], states that wired, wireless and nomadic network capacity
Computing as there are clouds in the sky on a rainy day [1, 2, will converge in about two decades. Furthermore, all three
3]. However, at the core is the idea of virtualization, the show similar, though time displaced exponential increases in
ability to offer a service or resource independent of any data rate. Evolving technologies such as WIMAX, LTE and
dedicated physical or software assets [5]. Broadly speaking Femtocell are already being deployed globally and will deliver
the resources can be classified into three categories or levels higher bandwidth as well as greater footprint, both of which
of abstraction [1].
are required for “ubiquitous access”. IPTV, i.e., digital TV
 Infrastructure resources such as raw computing or
service is delivered using the IP protocol over a packetstorage
switched network infrastructure, provides a two-way
 Platform resources such as development environments,
communication path between the subscriber and the content
database management systems, etc.
providers allowing for interactive services.
 Software services that provide applications to end users.
Education generally and specifically the enterprise of
There are many benefits of this arrangement to the end user. teaching the K-12 student population can reap tremendous
Regardless of the resource under consideration to the end user benefit from what the cloud has to offer. There are the obvious
the resource appears to be limitless [3]. The promise of real financial implications to start.
However, the most
time scalability frees the end user of having to model their fundamental aspect of the cloud for our purposes is the
demand curve or to worry about unexpected demand and to manner in which it facilitates collaboration [4], and
maintain assets that may not always be cost effectively collaboration is at the very heart of learning.
utilized. The following characteristics also offer significant
The cloud enables collaboration by providing applications
benefit.
that can manage the contributions of multiple agents
 The end user only pays when the resources are used.
simultaneously. Examples of such capabilities include the
 The provider bears the responsibility for maintenance
ability of diversely situated team members to edit a common
and provisioning
document, or remote musicians to create a virtual orchestra
 The end user need not concern themselves with
that can perform real music [8]. It would be very difficult, if
technology curves either at the hardware or software not impossible to accomplish these activities as efficiently if
level
each individual involved had to complete their own parts
separately using their own assets and then meld them all
together in a serial fashion.
To test the efficacy of the cloud with respect to the student
teacher collaboration we performed a small experiment
whereby we would simulate a virtual classroom using only
resources within the cloud.
II. THE EXPERIMENT
There were three roles in our experiment, a professor, a
cloud engineer and a student. Theses roles were played by the
3 authors, BR, SK and LV respectively. SK was responsible
for the design of our virtual classroom and BR was
responsible for providing the instruction. Both BR and SK are
solution architects at AT&T working on next generation
services including cloud computing. BR holds a PhD in
Computer Science and has taught at the college level. SK
holds a MS in Management Information Systems. LV is a
sophomore honors student at High Technology high school
who we met as part of a Job Shadow initiative. LV was
interested in learning how to program so we decided to enlist
him in our experiment.
Essentially we decided to teach an introductory course in
computer programming to a motivated student. The course
itself was similar to an Honors AP introductory Computer
Science class in Algorithms and Programming. The class met
for 20 sessions, each session lasting approximately 1½ hours.
The Syllabus we followed is shown below in Fig 1.
Introduction to Algorithms and Programming
1.
2.
3.
4.
What is an algorithm?

Black Box Model

Essential Properties: Correctness, Efficiency, Clarity

Relation to the concept of a “proof” in mathematics

Iterations & Recursion
Basic Computer Architecture

Component Model: RAM, CPU External Storage

HW architecture: Register Model

Instruction Set

Function of an Operating systems

Simple execution model

What a complier does
Introduction To Unix

File System

Shell

VI screen Editor
Introduction to C

Variables & Types

Operators & Precedence

Control Flow

Functions

Scope Rules

Pointers & Arrays

Data Structures

Program Structure

Interface to file System

Programming Style
Figure 1: Course Syllabus
However, instead of sitting in a classroom with assigned
textbooks and associated lab we taught the class completely n
the cloud. To accomplish this SK created the environment as
shown in Fig. 2.
For the computing resources we would need, SK created an
account on AT&T’s Synaptic Cloud Portal [12] and provided
access to the rest of the group. AT&T’s Synaptic Cloud Portal
is shown in Fig 3. Each of us would then able to spin up a
virtual machine (VM) whenever we needed it, i.e., for
classroom work, homework or projects. We choose Linux as
the Operating System for our VM and we choose C as the
programming language. Next SK created a private web site
using Google Sites [13] to serve as the online library and
repository for the syllabus, project materials and blog site. All
lecture notes, public free-ware, relevant URLs and
documentation were stored on the website. It should be noted
that there is great deal of work has been done to provide K-12
teachers with extensive reference material and training
resources over the web [10, 11]. To emulate the classroom
itself we used AT&T Connect [14], a cloud based
Teleconference service provided by AT&T. Once the end
users download the AT&T Connect client they are able to
create scheduled and on-demand interactive meetings that
combine audio and web presentation tools for rich multimedia sessions. Connect makes it easy to transfer presentation
control to any subscriber and thus allows a high degree of
interaction between the participants [9]. The requirements on
the end user device are quite minimal, i.e., the ability to run an
acceptable browser.
All the lectures were conducted via AT&T Connect web
meetings. The audio teleconference capability emulated the
verbal interaction between teacher and student in a very
natural way allowing for lecture, question & answer
interactions and dialogue between all the participants involved.
Connect’s web-meeting capability allowed the participants to
share data in either desktop sharing or whiteboard modes.
Using the whiteboard the instructor was able to emulate
writing or drawing on a chalkboard in a traditional classroom.
The ability to change presentation rights immediately and for
the presenter to be able to share their desktop was useful in
two distinct ways.
 The instructor could share material prepared in advance.
 We could take turns working on the virtual machine and
all see the results in real time.
Using method 1, the instructor could share lecture notes or
relevant material form the public domain, i.e. web pages or
content relevant to the specific topic being covered. In the
second method the student could share their programs and run
them while the rest of the participants observed the results.
This was particularly and surprisingly powerful. The class as
an integrated team could participate in getting a program to
compile or debugging an individuals program. This allowed
Figure 2: Virtual Classroom Components
everyone present to learn by doing. Both these modes show
models of collaboration that would be difficult to create in a
more traditional classroom environment. We will return to this
notion in section III.
As with all forms of learning it is critical that there be some
manner of validating that the student has indeed absorbed and
mastered the material presented. The environment we created
allowed for the traditional tools of homework, testing and
class projects. Using the collaboration capabilities we
discussed above, students could engage in positive learning
interactions in a less stressful manner that would allow the
instructor to determine quickly the state of their understanding.
III. RESULTS
A. The Cloud Engineers perspective (SK)
There were a number of performance measures that we set
ourselves to meet when creating this environment that would
directly impact the feasibility of extending this approach into
the educational system. These are described below along with
our evaluation of how well we met these measures.
Turn Key Operation: The environment should be easy to put
together and configure. Operation and management of the
system as a whole had to be as simple as possible and should
not require deep knowledge on the part of either the end users
or their designated administrators. I was able to administer the
VM, create the web site and distribute the AT&T Connect
application with very little effort. Most cloud providers
provide tools and /or documentation to help end users onboard their applications and use them.
1) Easy to Use: This is best evaluated by the end user and
will be evaluated in the following sections. Needless to say
this was a principal design objective when we created the
environment.
2) Cost Effective: The only costs we incurred were the costs
of using the virtual machine for projects and classroom
illustrations and the bandwidth charges incurred when using
AT&T Connect. Moreover, since the canonical billing
arrangement for cloud resources is usage based, i.e., pay for
Figure 3: AT&T’s Synaptic Cloud Portal
what you use our costs were negligible for both components.
On a larger scale there would be considerably more cost since
there would be an order of magnitude larger set of end users.
However, compared to the cost to purchase the corresponding
hardware & software in addition to the associated
maintenance cost we feel the cost benefit scales very well.
3) Scalable: The approach would have to be extendable or
scale naturally. Remember from Section I that to the end user,
the cloud appears to provide virtually limitless capacity. If for
the moment, we accept this as our operating hypothesis the
question of scalability reduces to the asymptotic behaviour of
the cost to demand ratio as the demand increases. This is at
the core of the cloud provided business model. In practice this
behaviour is not linear but approximated by a step function
that decreases with increasing demand. The specifics will
almost certainly vary between providers.
4) Ubiquitous: The user of this environment should be able to
access it from anywhere. This measure is a combination of
Device independence and Access independence.
 Device Independence: All that was required to access
any of the components of our environment was a
browser. LK primarily used a desktop to access, BR
used a laptop, iPad or an iPhone and I used a laptop.
 Access Independence: The underlying transport
mechanism included cable, WiFi, WAN/LAN and Fiber
to the Home.
The combination of these factors allowed BR to access the
environment form this office, coffee house, home and road.
5) Flawless performance.
The environment should be
available 24 x 7 and provide acceptable voice and data quality.
Latency and throughput should be within acceptable limits.
While our experience was not as robust with respect to these
measures as we would have liked, overall performance was
acceptable and did not interfere with meeting the goals of our
study.
6) Effectiveness. The environment I created was at least as
suitable as a traditional classroom in facilitating the learning
experience. This is the main topic of the next two sections. As
will be made clear we found this to be the case and in certain
aspects superseded what could be accomplished in a
traditional classroom.
B. The Instructors perspective (BR)
I have taught mathematics and computer science at the
undergraduate level in a traditional classroom environments
and enjoyed them thoroughly and especially the personal
interaction with the students. Therefore, to me it was all the
more surprising when I consider how enjoyable this
experience has been. The interaction with the student did not
seem diminished in any way. No doubt, the high quality of the
audio and web sharing provided by AT&T Connect militated
against the lack of visual contact. Of course, the use of video
streaming through a web cam or other mechanism would be
another alternative augmentation. However, what I did not
expect was that the virtual classroom would actually enable
learning to occur in a way that a traditional classroom could
not.
This occurred primarily through the ability to embed
programming on the virtual machine into the lectures. Being
able to edit programs, attempt to get them to compile and then
run together with the student or even watching the student
practice and helping them resolve difficulties in real time were
invaluable.
Nothing beats practice and nothing beats
debugging problems to teach the art and science of
programming. The light bulb went on for me when we were
discussing pointers and addressing in C. To make the concept
clear we created a simple program (Figure 3a) that allowed us
to see what the machine was actually storing in the space
allocated to the variables we declared as the program ran.
Program Code
[root@VM032064028228 ~]# vi ptr.c
#include <stdio.h>
main()
{int x; int y; int *ptr;
int **dblptr;
x = 25;
printf("%u", &x);printf("\n");
printf("%u", x);printf("\n");
ptr = &x;
printf("%u", &ptr);printf("\n");
printf("%u", ptr);printf("\n");
printf("%u", *ptr);printf("\n");
dblptr = &ptr;
printf("%u", &dblptr);printf("\n");
printf("%u", dblptr);printf("\n");
printf("%u", *dblptr);printf("\n");
printf("%u", **dblptr);printf("\n");printf("\n");printf("\n");
y = x;
printf("%u", y);printf("\n");
*ptr = 50;y = x;
printf("%u", y);printf("\n");
trip(&x);
printf("%u", y);printf("\n");
printf("%u", x);printf("\n");}
trip(x);int *x;
{*x = (*x)*(*x)*(*x);
//return(x);}
Figure 4a: Virtual Machine Screenshot
Then we ran the program and looked at the output (Figure
3b) side by side with the code.
All of a sudden a potentially subtle concept became clear.
In addition, by running the program again it was clear to the
student that the runtime environment was dynamic and
allocated different slots in memory to the same variable when
the programs was ran on separate occasions.
Additionally, performance issues such as the trade-off
between time and space in creating efficient algorithms can be
seen and analyzed in real time as a program runs/
Result
[root@VM032064028228 ~]# ptr
1858249160
25
1858249152
1858249160
25
1858249144
1858249152
1858249160
25
25
50
50
125000
Figure 4b: Virtual Machine Screenshot
In addition, it was easy to work on the computer and then
shift to whiteboard mode to illustrate a concept and then to the
web or other material via desktop sharing and then jump back
into the VM. It would be very difficult to operate in this
manner in a traditional classroom and this emergent property
of the environment would only be enhanced with more
participants.
There were a few aspects of the environment that could
stand to be improved. For one, the drawing tool on the
whiteboard was very difficult to use and I would like a more
natural and fluid drawing capability. Second, while it was
easy to join meetings or work on the VM from my tablet it
was not possible to share the screen and hence the applications.
This made it less easy to lecture form anywhere,
C. The students perspective (LV)
After several weeks of lessons and meeting through this
cloud based interface, I am certain that it is a far better method
for instruction than a traditional class room. Advantages were
many, while drawbacks were limited and generally easily
fixable.
First, the convenience of the setup was a major benefit.
Being able to work from my home desk was vastly superior to
working in a classroom or tech lab. With travel time
eliminated, more time could be and was devoted to class and
homework, allowing me to extract every possible ounce of
information I could get in my unfortunately limited time with
BR and SK. I also felt much more comfortable working from
my home, as the normal social problems of school were not a
factor. Aesthetic and social distractions did not affect my
work in anyway. I didn’t have to worry if my jeans were in
style or if my hair was messy, I could just focus on the task at
hand.
Secondly, the actual learning experience. After taking
several programming courses (ALICE, G&M coding, Action
Script, etc.) in basic Software Applications and Engineering
classes, I was generally disappointed with the lecturing system
of teaching how to code. The hands on experience working on
the Cloud system was a much better alternative, where I could
be shown a command on a whiteboard and immediately test it
out on a Unix machine with my instructor watching. This
much more personalized approach is, as BR put it one
afternoon, ‘the best method of teaching coding skills.
The drawbacks we encountered were largely due to this
being the first test of this set up. Our software and hardware
had some flaws, but these could be fixed relatively easily.
While the AT&T Connect Collaboration Tool was generally a
very good system, the whiteboard was often difficult to use
effectively. Writing with a mouse in a legible manner is near
impossible, and the text editing tools were poor. After several
lessons, we discovered that the best solution was to open a
Microsoft Word document and to type in that program while
sharing it through the portal. However, this is inefficient and
wastes processing space. This problem could be fixed rather
simply. A touch pad equipped with a pen would have solved
the hand writing problem immediately, and such devices are
readily available. The text editing tool could be redesigned
based on the text box feature in Microsoft Word, where a user
draws a shape of their choosing and can enter and edit text in
the shape.
Another potential drawback is the UNIX system present on
the Virtual Machine. While it did not present a problem to us,
most students have little to no experience with UNIX or Linux
machines, and are more accustomed to working on Mac or
Windows operating systems. Our Virtual Machine was
equipped with a windows operating system, so this problem is
basically solved already.
The lag present in the system was another problem. I
personally do not have a very good internet connection, and
my coding on the virtual machine was often impeded by the
fair amount of lag in the system. In some instances, it was
nearly impossible for me to scroll around my code due to my
cursor jumping ten lines at a time. For students with no access
to a better internet connection, either due to monetary
concerns or location, this could pose a serious problem, or it is
one problem for which I don’t have a solution yet.
Even with these disadvantages of the system, I would still
say this is the best classroom model I have ever had the
pleasure of experiencing. It was very rewarding and
encouraging to see the concepts taught on one side of my
screen put immediately into action on the other. With some
slight modifications to our hardware and software and
refinement of the curriculum, the class could be an immediate
improvement over current typical class rooms.
D. Limitations
While all parties involved positively evaluated the virtual
classroom there are clearly significant limitations that must be
addressed before attempting to generalize the results. Perhaps
the most obvious and significant limitation is that the
classroom involved only one student. In addition, our student
was highly motivated and a top performer. It is natural to
wonder whether similar positive results could be achieved
with a larger and more heterogeneous student population. As
we discussed above, scaling this environment would not be
onerous so the real issue is whether or not learning would
occur to the same degree. The explosion of distance learning
and the accreditation of online academies [15, 16, 19] is one
reason to think so. Another is the self directed ability of
children to learn given minimal conditions. A fascinating
experiment has occurred over the last decade that shows
children given access to computers with very little supervision
have been able to learn how to use these machines to educate
themselves [7]. Furthermore, computer based learning has
been shown to be effective for children with special needs and
for those just entering the system [18, 20]. However, the only
way to test the hypothesis is to run the experiment with a
larger and more diverse set of students. In addition, given that
there was only one student, there was no opportunity to take
advantage of peer-to-peer collaboration capability that is such
a natural by-product of the cloud environment.
Another limitation of our experiment was the course itself.
Perhaps this is an optimal manner in which to teach computer
science but how effective would it prove for other fields, say,
Social Science or Math or Language instruction. Again, there
is some evidence that online tools have been effective in
teaching language skills, writing, math, etc. [15, 16, 17, 20].
It is important to keep in mind that as opposed to web-based
learning our approach maintains the immediacy and dynamic
characteristics of the student – teacher interaction but extends
it to include virtual coaches and mentors that live in the cloud
[17, 21] as well as facilitating the peer-to-peer collaboration
mentioned above. In fact, for subjects such as language
learning this factor may play a significantly larger role in the
learning event. The resources available in the cloud to support
this interaction are vast and growing daily. It is hard to
imagine any subject that is not covered. In place of a virtual
machine with which to practice coding there are interactive
applications that can be just as easily brought into the virtual
classroom.
It is also possible that what appear to be limitations are in
fact only apparent. For example, in a traditional classroom, the
teacher can partition the room into project based pods and
then bring the sub teams back together to share results.
Actually many cloud based collaboration tools allow this
functionality. A web-meeting can be partitioned into submeetings each with its own private audio and data sessions
and at the appropriate time brought back into the original
supervening meeting room.
IV. SUMMARY & CONCLUSION
Though very focused and limited in scope we believe
that our simulation provides compelling evidence that the
cloud can provide the classroom of the future. There are
significant benefits to be had that include flexibility,
immediate access to the best tools the internet has to offer and
the ability for the educational system to focus only on the art
and science of education and not the management of
technology. By extending this simulation to different subject
matter, classroom size and age groups we can validate
whether the approach can truly generalize and realize similar
benefits. To that end we will be looking to partner with
forward looking educators across the world to implement their
classroom in similar fashion.
There are subgroups of the student population that can clearly
benefit from this approach
 Learners whose parents opt for Home schooling. Using
the cloud, like minded parents could create a virtual
classroom and share the cost, time and intellectual
content.
 Learners whose geography makes it difficult to travel to
a classroom
 Learners that are temporarily or permanently
disadvantaged and who would find it difficult to travel
to school.
 Learners who are in an alternative learning environment
and/or are better able to participate and succeed in an
online learning environment.
As long as there is some form of access to the internet and the
child has a device with a browser. They can participate in a
virtual classroom and attain most if not all if the benefit they
could from a brick and mortar classroom.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank our colleagues at AT&T
for their support and encouragements. In particular we would
like to thank Raluca Sirbu for her creative ideas on how to use
the cloud to improve the educational experience and Vicki
Allen for her perceptive comments and strategic view. We
would also like to thank Jack Swaim, Howard Lang and
Debbe Inzetta for bringing relevant applications to our
attention and providing feedback along the way.
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