The Network Workbench and Constructivism: Learning Protocols by Programming

The Network Workbench (NW) is a software environment for academic investigation of network protocol concepts. The structure and operation of NW has been described in detail elsewhere. This paper addresses the instructional design of NW with the intention of establishing that it represents`natural constructivism' in that it is strongly aligned with the constructivist approach. We begin with synopsis of constructivist educational philosophy. After this the architecture of NW and the facilities it provides are described, as are the 12 associated protocol programming projects. Based on these descriptions, the design of NW and its projects are evaluated in light of principles of the constructivist educational philosophy and shown to be in very strong alignment with them. We conclude that, although its development did not proceed from a formal grounding in constructivism, NW represents successful implementation of constructivist philosophy as a natural approach to teaching protocols for computer networking.