OPS335 Short-Term

Current Semester (Winter 2016)

Observations noted during Winter 2016 Semester (future fixes)

1. Leave textbook references in the OPS335 Weekly Schedule WIKI.
   
   
2. Some of the animations in the video showing how a server finds matrix are a little fast (particularly the root server responding with the address of .ca). I've also always meant to add in a final step to that with the client machine connecting directly to matrix. (side note: I can't believe I used to draw that on the board every semester...) - Peter C.
   
   
3. SInce the OPS335 lab logbook does not correspond to part a and part b, I have decided to place an ADDITIONAL check mark when they complete part B of a lab. Just sharing what I am doing in this situation - perhaps this can be looked at for future OPS335 semesters. - Murray S.

Concerns - Winter 2016 Semester

There is a major concern how to properly address and improve the OPS335 resources for students given the time available to deliver the course. Although this is a daunting task, there are many positives to consider.

POSITIVE ACTION

• The same OPS335 template (used for OPS235 curriculum issues and improvements) is now being used and addressing these issues
• There is a healthy participation with many of the OPS335 faculty to note their concerns
• Listing of alternative online resources and possible labs that have been used for past 4 semesters
• Tips and suggestions on how to avoid problems so that they be incorporated for the up-coming semester

On the other hand, due to various limitations (time frame, professors drawn-off to other projects and courses, and professors teaching course for first time) will have an impact on how this current OPS335 semester will be taught. Caution and wisdom must be used in order to improve the course while maintaining the learning objectives and educational content that is to be delivered in order to allow students to be successful in their other subjects throughout their program.

CONCERNS / LIMITATITIONS / TRIAGE

• There is approximately only one week until the start of the Winter 2016 semester
• Course meetings are held on Thursday January 7th (not much of a window for action or consensus)
• From preliminary review of Weekly Topics, there is a lack of online resources
• Students may feel more comfortable with online resources as opposed to referring to a text which may not "sync-up" with with lab contents
• Jason Carman (a program graduate and respected OPS235/OPS335 lab monitor and part-time OPS335 instructor) has offered his already existing (over 4 semesters) online notes and labs to study, incorporate and/or use
• Developing improvements to a course while in session is possible, but creates great stress on the professors to have material available on a weekly basis (hence using existing alternative materials may be a good option in this situation)
There is a need to perform triage: Identify the immediate issues, and determine what action to take in the immediate short-term, long-term and issues that can be wish-list items (for very long-term target dates)

Course of Action (For Consideration)

(To be discussed at OPS335 startup meeting: Thursday 7, 2016 @ 2:00 pm)

From feedback (suggestions) from OPS335 faculty, several important issues have been identified. Some issues may be addressed immediately, while other issues may be placed on list of items to address in the immediate future or distant future. Murray Saul will be having a non-contact spring/summer and could address those immediate future issues.

Based on the feedback, yet time constraint to deliver the OPS335 course, the following Courses of Actions to be considered are:

1. Change Grade Weighting for OPS335
   
   

• New weighting:
  Midterm Exam: 30%
  Final Exam: 30% (instead of 40%)
  Assignments (2): 20%
  Labs & Quizzes: 20%
  
  
• Rationale for change:

• OPS335 final exam weight more in line with OPS235.
• Suggestion to have two midterm tests (both adding up to 30%) instead of practical tests that my overload students.
• The combined 20% for labs and quizzes provide OPS335 instructions flexibility to evaluate in their "own style".
• Mary Lynn does not have problems with making Final exam 30%, but any discussion needs to be discussed and approved prior to changing evaluation on OPS335 Winter 2016 subject outline. Having midterm exam divided into 2 parts may require more consideration for approval, but have 2 interim tests would be considered to be "optimal"
  
  

2. Select "Best" existing online resource(s) to support lab-work
   
   

• Rationale:

• Based on this author's experience, is is NOT realistic to create online resources "from Scratch".
• Stress on professor(s) to create resources "on-the-fly" is greatly multiplied with other profs depend on material.
• We shouldn't be re-inventing the wheel (existing resources from Peter C. and Jason C.).
• Important online resource be comprehensive and easily to follow (in order for students to make lab-logbook notes).
• Although different resources could be offerred in the WIKI, too much information could overload students.
  
  

3. Use only one version up-to-date labs that work correctly

• Rationale:

• Labs are usually the "control points" to help prepare students for assignments, midterms and final exams.
• Labs should incorporate tips and suggestions from OPS335 instructors to avoid problems (reduce student frustration).
• Labs need to reflect required material (listed in OPS335 subject outline) since later courses are dependent on learned skills
  i.e. "thou shalt not mess with the curriculum without proper due process and authorization..."
  
  
• Although Professors have flexibility to use their own notes and assignments, there should be consistency using same labs and a common final exam (collaboration with all OPS335 instructors)
  
  

4. Tweaking OPS335 Labs

• General consensus to move Backup lab up the stack (eg. Lab 1 or 2). Is Networking lab redundant, or can Backups be combine with Networking lab1?
• Raymond Chan indicates that using only Centos7 for host and VMs should NOT have an impact on other courses in the CNS/CTY curriculum. Recommended to use only Centos7 for OPS335 labs.
• Iptables lab should be spread-out over 2 weeks.
• FTP lab should be dropped, although concepts taught. In future, should FTP content be replaced with "cloud" content?
• Raymond Chan indicates he has a better lab for e-mail
• Focus should be on 8 labs with 1 preparation lab
  
  
• Proposed OPS335 Lab Order (Topic for discussion):

Lab Number	Description
0	Preparation for Labs
1	Backups and Networking tweaks
2	Packet Filtering (IP Tables - Two Weeks: Part A and Part B?)
3	DNS
4	Mail (Raymond's Lab)
5	Web-servers
6	Samba
7	NFS with Automount
8	NIS

• OPS335 Action Plan:

• Scott Apted to look into "tightening" Learning Outcomes for OPS335 Subject Outline
• Murray Saul to contact appropriate admin to change weighting of final exam and (lab / quiz) weighting
• Andrew Smith to modify / check / improve labs
• Murray Saul to place Jason Carmans' OPS335 Notes into readable form and share with OPS335 instructors for verificaiton / Modification
• Raymond Chan to share e-mail lab (Current status: e-mailed to Murray Saul)
• All OPS335 professors encouraged to contribute to "short-term OPS335 WIKI (Murray Saul on watch-list in case of problems)

• Unassigned Tasks (TODOs):

• Add online resources to reflect Centos7
• Proof-read and test-out tweaked labs
• Generate questions for OPS335 final (can be done later)

5. Separate Short-term (realistic) Improvements from Long-term Improvements

• Rationale:

• Instructors may have other courses to teach or duties to perform.
• Best to "triage" issues to place them in their proper category. This will encourage faculty to see that their suggestions have merit, but are properly prioritized.
• Careful viewing of the OPS335 subject outline should be studied if certain topics can be better addressed in another course (avoid overlap).
  
  Example: OPS435 is currently being looked at for redesign. It may be a "window of opportunity". On the other hand, OPS435 may be considered a CTY course, and offloading a topic or two from OPS335 will not benefit the CNS students.
  
  
• This WIKI should be resigned to have short-term / long-term / wish list on the same page.
• OPS335 instructors should be encouraged to make entries concerning OPS335 as soon as they encounter problems. These issues can be fixes immediately (and communicated to OPS335 instructors if they are on this WIKI's watchlist). These issues can also be used as "talking points" in subsequent OPS335 startup meetings.
• Since it is difficult to conduct face-to-face OPS335 meetings, this WIKI would be the "essential" tool to help keep OPS335 instructors informed and "in-sync".
  
  

Discussion (Participation) from OPS335 Faculty

1. The number of topics in the current form of the course is impossible for the students. I haven't had a single one excell at all of them and I've had some very talented students. We need to pick some topics we feel would be crucial and drop the rest or reduce the rest to study-only-no-labs (the latter seems useless to me) --Andrew
   
   
2. I've found the number of labs is reasonable, provided the labs:
   1. work in general (which I found was the biggest issue, and thus modified all the labs the first semester I taught the course (in some cases had to do a complete rewrite)
   2. Allow Post-iptables labs to work. I have my students flush the rules, set the default policies to accept and save them as such (and disable firewalld). This way when they troubleshoot problems, at least it's not iptables getting in the way. --Jason
   
   
3. Eleven labs seems to be a lot of labs for this course. Can't students simply use c7host that they created in OPS235 (with tweaks) in order to streamline labs 0 and 1? Can students use their existing OPS235 removable hard drives to reduce re-installing CENTOS7?
   • I don't think there should be a lab0. That setup should be done on their own time in advance, all needed to do the setup was learned in OPS235. If the students don't remember - that's a good reason for them to spend extra time getting a refresher on OPS235. -- Andrew
   • Same for networking. All the students had trouble with basic network setup. They need to be told to go back on their own and remember how to configure an interface. And they have to be tested on it for the first 2-3 weeks to make sure they know it's a serious requirement. --Andrew
     
     
   • Can't use c7host from 235 because a good number of students don't have it any more, it's not unusual for students to go to coop between 235 and 335. -- Andrew
   
   UPDATE: According to Scott Apted:
   students going to co-op before doing OPS335 will not be valid as of September 2016
   
   
   • Of the existing labs to drop, I think ftp should go. I'm debating the benefits of dropping it entirely at night, or replacing it with something cloud based -- like ownCloud. -- Jason
   
   
4. Would be preferable to include online resources (as opposed to out-of-sync textbooks) to discuss the concepts and properly prepare them for the lab-work:
   
   
   • [ OPS335-Lab1 Overview ]
   • [ OPS335-Lab2 Overview ]
   • [ OPS335-Lab3 Overview ]
   • [ OPS335-Lab4 Overview ]
   • [ OPS335-Lab5 Overview ]
   • [ OPS335-Lab6 Overview ]
   • [ OPS335-Lab7 Overview ]
   • [ OPS335-Lab8 Overview ]
   • [ OPS335-Lab9 Overview ]
   • [ OPS335-Lab10 Overview ]
   
   
   Or here are alternative online resources that are already used for OPS335 continuing Education - could these be used or incorporated?(May be out of sync):
   
   
   • [ OPS335-Lab1-Overview-alternative ]
   • [ OPS335-Lab2 Overview-alternative ]
   • [ OPS335-Lab3 Overview-alternative ]
   • [ OPS335-Lab4 Overview-alternative ]
   • [ OPS335-Lab5 Overview-alternative ]
   • [ OPS335-Lab6 Overview-alternative ]
   • [ OPS335-Lab7 Overview-alternative ]
   • [ OPS335-Lab8 Overview-alternative ]
   • [ OPS335-Lab9 Overview-alternative ]
   • [ OPS335-Lab10 Overview-alternative ]
   • [ OPS335-Lab11 Overview-alternative ]
   
   
   
5. Here is an alternative set of OPS335 labs (Continuing Education) to the ones used in Weekly Schedule in current OPS335 WIKI:
   
   [ alternative labs ]
   
   
6. Labs need to be worth more, 2% per lab in OPS235 seems to work well. --Andrew
   
   • Fully agree, my breakdown at night (Continuing Education) that I largely inherited is differently weighted, copy/pasted the breakdown as follows:
     • Quizzes (1 per lab, staggered a week after the lab is introduced as in uli101 & ops235) - 10%
     • Tests (mid term) - 30%
     • Assignments (1 - broken down into several parts)- 10%
     • Lab work - 20%
     • Final Exam -30%
     • I'm planning on dropping the weighting of the mid term to 25%, and upping the assignment to 15% as I find at 10% a good portion of the students don't even bother doing it. The above breakdown addresses Andrew's point about quizzes as well -- Jason
       
       
7. Need lots of small quizzes. Perhaps one per week unless nothing new's been taught that week. --Andrew
   
   
8. Need two tests, preferably practical - especially since the exam is written. -- Andrew
   • I have one written mid-term currently. There's pros and cons to a practical test, I try to cover more troubleshooting and questions directly from the labs in my written tests. The downside to a practical is having to rely on Seneca's network working (which is unreliable at best). Instead I have 1 assignment, research and implement something not covered in the course, and provide detailed documentation as to how to do it (similar level of detail as given in the labs). -- Jason
     
     
9. Use CentOS on the virtual machines. Using Fedora has been no more successful in OPS335 than in OPS235. CentOS has problems but it's consistent and reliable. Fedora will do some random crap you won't believe. All the tools and services used in the course are equivalent between CentOS and Fedora (except yum/dnf which are the same anyway). --Andrew
   • I use centos 6.7 on the host (because 7 caused issues with portabity - crashes completely if there's a significant change in hardware and won't boot again. centos 7 on all 3 virtual machines -- Jason
     
     
10. Iptables is really complex but still the industry standard for firewalls. Firewalld may or may not (probably not) replace it. There's no time to teach both, should get rid of Firewalld completely. --Andrew
    • Fully agree - I've been trying to figure out how to mix Firewalld into the course, presently I only cover iptables. -- Jason
      
      
11. Assignments need to be posted on the wiki, can have different versions for different faculty if need be. --Andrew
12. If assignments include a test plan (as they did in previous semesters) the students need to be told what a good test plan looks like and given a better template. In other words - it needs to be taught. --Andrew
13. If we keep webmail - roundcube looks much more like a real webmail than squirrelmail. --Andrew
14. Each lab should have a diagram of the expected current state of the virtual network and all the machines/services in it. --Andrew
15. Using a samba client in linux is nearly unheard of. If we keep samba - we should make them create a windows virtual machine to use as a client. --Andrew
16. As in OPS235 there isn't enough time to cover SELinux in this course. It randomly causes serious problems. Should have instructions to disable it in new installations. Installation lab check script insists that it's enabled --Andrew
17. Should use consistent hostnames for host, vm-name/image-filename/vm-hostname --Andrew
18. Have a quiz first day of class to evaluate what the students know to begin with. --Andrew

Previous Semesters

Additional Resources / Navigation

• OPS335 - Curriculum Discussion
• OPS Stream Discussion
• CNS / CTY Curriculum Development