Course development

This course has been giving in a virtual format. We made two main modifications with respect to the physical lectures: (i) We organized more breakout rooms to discuss specific topics and (ii) we tested live quizzes using Mentimeter that the students could answer after some specific modules (based on a request from the students). We improved the tutorials and project descriptions to resolve all the problems mentioned in the previous edition. We also tried to give more freedom to the students on how to form the groups, letting the students choose the size and the team members with even more freedom than before. We also experimented a different learning method for the programmable network part. Instead of presenting the context and theory and then let the students start working on the project, we first gave the project description and programming tools to the students and let them explore these. The theory came while they were already well acquainted with the practical tools. We also added weekly 20-minute per-group meetings to give feedback to the students about their project.

The main modification has been the introduction of a group project as discussed in the last-year course analysis. The aim of the group project was to make the course more practical and to help the students relating the teaching material with real-world implementations. We also aligned the grading criteria with the ILOs and the written examination.

The course has been expanded by providing more information into Ethernet and STP routing protocols as well as a new module on Programmable networks. The datacenter module has been reduced to keep the load in line with the number of credits.