Speakers
Description
NMaaS is a GÉANT production service offered to the NREN and R&E community for the past 5 years. It runs on top of the nmaas platform open source software. This talk will showcase the recently developed nmaas platform features supporting the novel virtual laboratory use-case aimed at the education sector. New functionalities facilitate organising large-scale hands-on exercises in both formal and informal education context. We will also report on the experience gained through piloting Virtual Labs in real-world courses conducted at a European university and how the academic staff and the students were able to benefit from it.
What will the TNC audience take away from your talk
The audience will be provided with up to date information about NMaaS being a GÉANT Project service that is continuously available and enhanced to serve the NREN community. NMaaS should no longer be considered as a platform meant solely for network management and hence the aim is to promote a brand new virtual lab use case for which the target audience is slightly different. The main takeaway from the talk will be how NMaaS for Virtual Labs can ease the day-to-day tasks of the teaching and support staff across universities by providing a seamless way of organising interactive hands-on exercises at scale, while at the same time unburdening the students from making complex software deployments locally.
As we have seen, apart from the University on which the virtual lab concept was piloted, there is already an interest in using NMaaS for organising hand-on exercises or tutorials from other Institutions already aware of this solution. The potential of establishing a wide community of interested people who would not only use NMaaS for Virtual Labs but also contribute additional applications and more importantly share the associated learning materials themselves is only possible by disseminating the benefits to as wide-ranging audiences as possible and TNC is the perfect opportunity for this.
