Hybrid Project Based Learning Techniques for Teaching Advanced Operating Systems Course Using Open Source Tools

Abstract

As modern operating systems are becoming more complex in aspects of design and architecture, to e ciently manage the modern sophisticated hardware there is a growing need to groom computer science students to be well trained in design and development of such systems. The applied and practical nature of this course makes it challenging for students to explore the complexity in limited amount of time. This thesis proposes a modi ed form of PBL by combining it with lectures delivered by the instructors. This technique is called hybrid project based learning (HPBL) in which before attempting a real life problem, the instructor gives students a short lecture by explaining the background and also covering su cient details which helps them understand and analyze problems. This technique has been applied while teaching Advanced Operating Systems course of MS computer science discipline at National University of Science and Technology, Islamabad. Five lab tasks are designed on ve di erent topics from Operating systems which covers hardware and underlying software level details. The details of design, implementation and evaluation of each lab task is discussed in this thesis. This technique is later compared with traditional style of teaching and the feedback is analyzed. The results showed that 80% of the respondents are more comfortable with HPBL than traditional teaching.