CASE DESCRIPTION

In late 1999 a casual contact with the Cisco New Zealand country manager led the department of Management Science and Information Systems (MSIS) to consider the possibility of becoming a regional academy and of introducing the Cisco Networking Academy Program as part of the data communication courses. The networking academy is a Web-based program with curricula accessed through a Web browser and comprises significant practical experience carried out within a lab environment. On completion of the training, the students will be prepared to sit the Cisco Certified Networking Associate (CCNA) and Cisco Certified Networking Professional (CCNP) accreditation tests at any of a number of independent testing centres (Cisco Systems, 2000).

The Cisco Networking Academy Program was launched in the United States in October 1997 and in the Asia Pacific region in September 1998. Today, there are more than 8,000 academies operating in 140 countries worldwide and some 270,000 students enrolled (Cisco Systems, 2002). The program supports instructors' needs by providing lab equipment, software (including automated grade books and course administration tools), lesson plans, technical support and access to a global community of fellow instructors. Students benefit from the use of an on-line curriculum that can be accessed (after proper authentication) from any browser-enabled device and from assessment facilities that provide timely learning feedback.

The Cisco program includes instruction in the following areas: safety, networking, network terminology and protocols, LANs, WANs, the OSI model, cabling, cabling tools, routers, router programming, network topologies, IP addressing, virtual LANs, network switching, network troubleshooting and network standards. Particular emphasis is given to the use of problem-solving techniques and design methodologies to solve networking problems. The course includes a threaded case study used to illustrate the most important issues associated with a large-scale networking design project.

Adapting the Cisco Networking Academy Program

The Networking Academy Program was aimed at high-school pupils studying the last two years of their secondary studies or/and to first- and second-year tertiary students. In many cases the curriculum is delivered exactly as suggested by Cisco without any changes or enhancements. The MSIS data communication courses have traditionally covered additional material, and several aspects of the subject area are treated at a higher level of detail. To preserve the integrity of the courses the department decided to integrate the Cisco curriculum as an additional practical component without sacrificing or reducing the core contents of the courses. This decision resulted in a "localisation" of the Networking Academy Program to fit the institution's goals. The main consequences of that decision are:

• The program is not delivered exactly as prescribed by Cisco,

• Some sections of the curriculum are not covered during the lectures or tutorials and students are advised to self-study that material, and

• Key lab activities are performed but some labs are not delivered.

The 280-hour, four-semester curriculum has been combined with three of the MSIS courses as follows:

Data Communications (second-year): three lecture hours and one tutorial hour per week (during 12 weeks). Nine labs (one hour each). Includes Semester 1 of the Cisco Networking Academy Program.

Advanced Data Communications (third-year): three lecture hours and one tutorial hour per week (during 12 weeks). 10 labs (one hour each). Includes Semester 2 of the Cisco Networking Academy Program.

Computer Networks (third-year): three lecture hours and one tutorial hour per week (during 12 weeks). 10 labs (one hour each). Includes Semesters 3 and 4 of the Cisco Networking Academy Program.

Advantages of the Program

The arrangement discussed in the previous section aims at achieving a combination of the "best of both worlds" by maintaining the core contents of the university courses while complementing them with the Web-based Cisco Networking Academy Program curriculum and the lab assignments. The curriculum has now been changed to accommodate different learning styles by employing multiple media to deliver content—text, audio, extensive graphics and movies. The learning takes place in three main steps:

1. Presentation and teaching of concepts,

2. Demonstration, clarification of issues and linking of concepts to a particular current task (use of examples and analogies), and

3. Hands-on lab experiments.

The students have access to the on-line material at any time and from any place; however the on-line tests and exams are conducted in a controlled environment.

Computer-aided instruction is used as one of a combination of teaching techniques (Alessi & Trollip, 1991), and student learning is improved through the adherence to a set of "best practices," which are contained in a document of the Cisco Networking Academy Program instructor support resources. Best practices are a broad set of activities that are intended to assist student learning. Examples of best practices include challenges, design activities, graphical organizers, group work, journals, kinesthetic activities, lab exams, minilectures, on-line study, oral exams, portfolios, presentations, rubrics, study guides, troubleshooting and Web research. To ensure that improved learning is taking place, instructor guidelines are presented that facilitate the matching of one or more best practices with the hierarchical framework for multiple levels of thinking associated with Bloom's taxonomy (1956). Bloom's taxonomy includes six levels of thinking starting from knowledge, working their way up through comprehension, application, analysis and synthesis, and ending with evaluation. Since the best practices provide a variety of opportunities to learn, the question becomes what is the best mix of activities, given current subject matter, goals (both organizational and student), and available resources, throughout the delivery of the course. It is the alignment of appropriate best practices with subject matter that is invaluable in ensuring a rewarding learning experience for students.

The network design project that was usually included as part of the second-year course has been postponed to the third-year and included in the last course of the program as a threaded case study. The objective of this change is to prepare the students for a complete year before they attempt the group project. Many of the concepts introduced and practiced during that year assist them in producing better results. In the past, students produced group project reports that were good, sometimes excellent, given the limited exposure to the subject area. With the addition of the Cisco Networking Academy Program components, the students were able to produce more professional results using their more detailed knowledge and applying a number of procedures, skills and techniques for the analysis, design, implementation and presentation of their case studies. This task provides the perfect example of a "synthesis" activity as discussed in Bloom's taxonomy. Students combine the theoretical knowledge acquired and the practical skills learned in the "putting together of elements and parts so as to form a whole" (Bloom, 1956).

The main weakness of the previous reports from group projects lay in the fact that many of the solutions proposed by the students were missing key components (for example: lack of adequate interfaces in the routers proposed or lack of security) or simply wouldn't have worked due to compatibility problems. These omissions were easier to spot when producing their case studies because by then students have been exposed to detailed information and practice (in the labs) about how to properly configure and design LANs and WANs. Their understanding of user and business requirements and how to integrate them into the design was also superior; even their writing and presentation skills (as last-semester students) have improved.

The synergy achieved by using the labs to provide hands-on learning and skill-set development as a complement to the theory delivered during the lecture hours was invaluable. Lecturers were able to maintain student interest by providing immediate links to lab activities. An otherwise dry and complicated explanation about link-state routing protocols, for instance, can be enlightened by hands-on tasks where students "see" the protocol operating and the routers exchanging information about the state of the links between them. The labs provided opportunities for students to engage their network troubleshooting skills and were an important instrument for the delivery of the higher-order educational outputs of critical-thinking and problem-solving abilities. This synergy produced many "Aha!" moments, whereby suddenly an abstract concept is finally grasped. Needless to say these moments were very satisfying for both learners and instructors.

Disadvantages of the Combined Program

The major disadvantage of the combined (Cisco Networking Academy Program plus the university's) program was the additional resources requirements. Lab facilities are essential, including room allocations, time-tabling for the different courses and streams, hardware, software and Internet connections. Additional staff was also needed to teach and supervise the lab sessions. It is not unusual for a typical class (three lecture hours per week) to require more than six one-hour lab sessions per week. This additional load cannot simply be added to the teaching workload of the course lecturer. Additionally, extra course coordination tasks were necessary; for example, the Cisco assessment system needs an administrator/user to add students to the system, activate chapter tests and exams, print certificates, etc.

Students' Evaluations

The Centre for Professional Development at the University of Auckland uses the Students' Evaluation of Educational Quality, or SEEQ, which is a well-tested instrument that generates a profile of teaching performance. It provides comprehensive feedback from students to support improvement related to each of a number of factors, and it has been shown to improve the quality of teaching when feedback is combined with consultation.

Students were asked to respond to a number of questions using a rating scale. A five-point Likert scale was used from strongly agree to strongly disagree, with a neutral response category as well. For enhanced face validity, the numbers are converted as follows: 1=0, 2=2.5, 3=5, 4=7.5, and 5=10. This gives a "mark out of 10." The SEEQ collects student perceptions of an individual lecturer's performance on 35 items across nine scales, data concerning difficulty and pace of the course, and qualitative data for feedback to the lecturer. Additionally there are two questions about overall ratings of the course and of the lecturer.

Tables 1 and 2 show a comparison of SEEQ results between the data communication courses. The six scales selected are course-related. The Group Interaction scale was not measured in 2001 for the Data Communications course and is therefore not shown in the first table. Lecturer-specific scales have been eliminated from this comparison. The 2000 offerings did not include the Cisco curriculum as the practical component of the courses.

Table 1: SEEQ Evaluation Results for the Data Communication Course

Data Communications	2000	2001	Improvement	Faculty Mean 2001
Learning and Academic Value	6.05	7.06	16.7%	6.79
Organization and Clarity	5.99	6.75	12.7%	6.44
Breadth of coverage	6.63	7.30	10.1%	6.34
Assignments and Readings	5.51	6.79	23.2%	6.45
Overall Rating	5.97	7.21	20.8%	7.00

Table 2: SEEQ Evaluation Results for the Advanced Data Communications Course

Advanced Data Communications	2000	2001	Improvement	Faculty Mean 2001
Learning and Academic Value	5.74	7.46	30.0%	6.38
Organization and Clarity	4.74	7.33	54.6%	6.30
Group Interaction	6.14	7.52	22.5%	6.36
Breadth of coverage	6.24	7.30	17.0%	6.37
Assignments and Readings	5.02	6.79	35.3%	6.53
Overall Rating	4.87	7.83	60.8%	6.14

All categories show improvements for 2001 and all categories are now located above faculty averages for the same year. Additional course feedback was also obtained by using the Course Feedback questionnaires included in the Cisco Networking Academy Program.

Some categories were not covered in the SEEQ instrument and are of special interest to this case study. Those results (converted to a 10-point scale to facilitate comparisons) for 2001 are shown in Tables 3 and 4.

Table 3: Networking Academy Evaluation for the Data Communications Course

Item	Result
The activities and labs helped me achieve the stated course objectives	7.96
The assessment tools helped me evaluate my knowledge of the lesson	7.82
Overall, the course materials were of high quality	8.18
The classroom and laboratory provided a comfortable learning environment	7.60

Table 4: Networking Academy Evaluation for the Advanced Data Communications Course

Item	Result
The activities and labs helped me achieve the stated course objectives	7.98
The assessment tools helped me evaluate my knowledge of the lesson	7.62
Overall, the course materials were of high quality	8.28
The classroom and laboratory provided a comfortable learning environment	7.92