Pedagogical Framework and Network Laboratory Management Tool for Practical Network Administration Education

Abstract

Abstract System Administration is an emerging academic discipline, yet there remains no commonly-accepted approach to teaching the core skill of troubleshooting system problems. Troubleshooting is considered by many in the field to be the single most important skill for a working professional. The lack of common teaching methodology for this skill has resulted in an on-the-job-training approach to teaching that is not scalable or measurable. This research addresses this gap with an approach that may be developed into a reliable, repeatable, scalable, and, most importantly, measurable approach to teaching the critical system administration troubleshooting skill. The research produced two core results, a proposed Pedagogical Framework to guide the teaching process, and a Network Laboratory Management Tool that is a proof of concept and basis for a more general purpose, practical implementation of the Framework. In this thesis the Framework and Tool are presented in detail and future work is described.