Services for deploying web-based online courses

Online courses offer students opportunities to participate in classes on their own schedule from anywhere in the world. Offering an online lab-based course, however, has always been a challenge due to the difficulty in accessing a real lab environment. The Department of Networking, Security, and Systems Administration at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) has successfully deployed advanced online technologies to develop a series of online lab-based courses including the Web-security auditing course. The auditing course is designed to teach students processes and procedures for auditing Web applications and services, and develop students´ ability to apply appropriate tools to conduct Web servers and applications auditing in the real world. In this paper, the author uses the online Web-auditing course as a case study to demonstrate the use of current advanced technologies for deploying online education. Equipped with only a Web browser, students from all over the world are able to access lecture materials, work on labs in virtual environments, take exams and make presentations. The author believes the model introduced in this paper will be the future model to deliver education services.