Teaching Programming Courses Online using Cloud System: Practices and Future Challenges

Acceptance of cloud systems as the future has given way to a large number of cloud application installations. They have their presence across domains be it banking, gaming, education and others. A cloud based solution brings down the cost of ownership and maintenance for the host organization. For the users a resilience to use any type of end device being it a workstation, laptop, netbook or even a smartphone to access the application. A typical cloud based LMS was developed with appropriate pedagogy to teach programming courses. Necessary software required are made available on the cloud, with a bare minimum hardware spec requirement at the user end. The paper highlights the adaptability to such pure online course by the students and their learning outcomes. The paper also discusses the issues and challenges both in terms of technology and pedagogy which needs to be addressed when such online courses are planned.