Cloud Computing in Computer Science and Engineering Education

Cloud Computing opens a new chapter in Information Technology. It has its roots in internet technology, and like the Internet, it is rapidly and forcefully advancing into a large range of applications and services. While standardization of Cloud Computing is ongoing, there is every indication that cloud technology is here to stay and will cover most sectors of society, including education. This paper discusses the potentials of Cloud-Based Education (CBE) in STEM areas to better stimulate and engage students in their pursuit of knowledge and learning. This paper introduces the concept of Cloud-Based Education for Computer Science (CBE-CS) and discusses how its framework can be achieved. Further, it shows how the platform can be generalized to use in various STEM areas. The authors argue that the potentials in using Cloud Computing for teaching Computer Science courses are extraordinary since CS has an intimate relationship with the cloud infrastructure. Thus, CBE-CS can greatly facilitate teaching complex underlying organizations of CS courses such as Operating Systems, Communication Networks, Cyberspace Security, Web-Based Applications, Database, and High Performance Computing. While other STEM education can extensively benefit from CBE at the Software as a Service (SaaS) level to present meaningful examples in the lectures, CS courses can move deeper and also utilize the lower levels of cloud services. Such capability can deliver valuable examples and laboratories for CS students to better understand large scale applications and their complexities.