Assessing student views of traditional, free, and interactive modifications for an introductory networking course

Common questions faced by instructors in their course designs are how to incorporate interactive technologies to increase student motivation as well as limiting the costs associated with education, contributed predominantly through course textbooks. We describe two course changes from a baseline scenario for a networking course, which aim at making the course no-cost using public domain content or, alternatively, focus on making the course highly interactive. We find that course cost benefits were offset by shortcomings in the open-source material replacing the textbook, but that the additional course costs of an interactive course are offset by increased course and learning perceptions reported by students. The focus on instructional interactivity, however, left the hands-on components up to students, with a potentially negative impact on the perceived quality of instruction.