Students' satisfaction when using a remote virtual lab based on Amazon EC2 for networking courses at PUCMM

This thesis compared the students' level of satisfaction when using a remote virtual lab based on Amazon EC2 for networking courses at PUCMM, versus using the existing traditional laboratories. For this study junior and senior students were chosen from Systems Engineering and Telecommunications Engineering programs at PUCMM from two laboratories subjects: Operating Systems Lab I and Data Switching Lab. These lab subjects include certain number of laboratory practices during the whole class period. For this research, only one laboratory practice was evaluated (physically vs. virtually) in each subject. The rest of the laboratory practices were done as usual (physically) in each subject. When students completed their labs (physically and virtually), they took an evaluation test regarding their experience with the physical and the virtual labs. This evaluation measured the satisfaction of the students and provided information about their preferences for the physical or the virtual lab.