Flexible Cis Laboratory Environment Employing Multi Boot And Virtual Computing

This work describes an innovative flexible multipurpose laboratory environment designed to support a large variety of laboratory exercises in a Computer Information Systems (CIS) curriculum. The environment employs multi-boot and virtual computing. Although it may be ideal to have separate labs for each course, this is often not feasible, and a single set of computers has to be used in different ways throughout the day; perhaps with networking, programming, PC repair, server administration, security, web design, operating systems and other courses all sharing the same resources. Virtual computing allows a single workstation to host many different operating system (OS) instances all running on a uniform, stable, base OS. This is an ideal environment for a flexible lab. However, some software, like EnCase and other computer forensics applications, is unable to function properly within a virtualized environment, usually because more direct access to hardware is required. In these situations, workstations can be configured to use dual or multiple booting to start up the desired OS for a course without interfering with other courses. This combination of technologies is successfully implemented to support many of the CIS courses at our institution. The success of this laboratory environment is assessed and evaluated through Faculty discussions as well as student performance on standardized certificate examinations. Results demonstrate an effective multi-course CIS laboratory environment.