OnPIT: Online Platform for Interactive Tutorials

Overview

Learning about new technologies is challenging if not adequately supported by appealing hands-on activities. A compelling approach is represented by interactive labs: an online environment made available to users as a web application over the Internet. Users can then follow a tutorial and carry out the related tasks directly in the browser, without the need to install any software locally on their computer. This is particularly beneficial for many cloud-native technologies (such as Docker and Kubernetes), the installation and setup of which could be very cumbersome in the first place.

The goal of this pilot is to build an online learning environment for interactive labs as a web application. The web application enables users to carry out interactive tutorials directly in their browser and allows an administrator (e.g., a teacher) to to keep track of the progress as well as of the outcome of the labs. The pilot includes the realization of a prototype that could possibly be used in teaching already in fall 2020.