DE Oracle @ UMUC

Use of OPNET (Virtual Labs) in UMUC Networking Courses

Dr. Loyce Pailen

Associate Provost

Office of Instructional Services and Support

Published: March-April 2006

Category: » University-showcase » Multimedia-learning-objects

How do you teach an especially difficult topic in the online classroom environment? Face-to-face, you can dialog with students, draw depictions on a board, or determine from facial expressions whether or not you are getting your point across.

Online, these techniques are difficult to emulate. Many instructors, especially in math, science, and computer disciplines, have long struggled to teach in the online environment the complex but required elements of the class that seem to be more easily discussed, described, and depicted in a face-to-face setting.

This conundrum is exponentially more complicated for courses that offer advanced network computing topics, such as those of UMUC's undergraduate curriculum in Computer Information Technology (CMIT). The CMIT curriculum is designed to prepare students for various industry certifications, including vendor-specific courses for Cisco and Microsoft products, and non-vendor-specific industry certifications like the ones offered by CompTIA. As academic directors in SUS and GSMT worked on putting the CompTIA Network+, telecommunications, and information technology courses online, we have encountered a compelling need for simple but effective ways of demonstrating networking and telecommunications topics to students.

Typical terms, definitions, and usage patterns taught for items like networking protocols, the OSI model, network hardware and software are not familiar to many students even when they have a PC background.  Furthermore, putting the terms into context in the online environment could be a monumental and expensive task to provide remote access and support to “real” hardware and to provide the concepts in a scalable fashion.

After substantial research, OPNET ITGURU was selected to be a virtual laboratory component in the undergraduate on-line class CMIT 265 Networking Essentials and the graduate class MSIT 640 Data Communications and Networks. To address the need to provide hands-on tools to substantiate the theory and topics, UMUC staff have used OPNET tools to create a virtual laboratory -- a simulated networking environment -- for students to experience.

OPNET scenarios have been created to allow students to produce model local area networks (LANs) and to connect them, creating a virtual wide area network (WAN). Subsequent phases provided the students with opportunities to simulate network traffic across the WAN, implement new usage patterns and applications, and view and report on their effect on the network.

Students thoroughly enjoy the ability to create a working network in this "virtual" manner. Many comment on the value of the simulation to support learning objectives. Faculty benefit from offering something other than text and textbooks to teach difficult topics. Ultimately, the University benefits for providing a robust model that would be costly to provide in a "live" lab.

For information on the comprehensive online lab implementation framework used to define requirements, select a vendor, and design, develop and implement the OPNET learning object, please contact lpailen@umuc.edu.