Teaching Clouds: Lessons Taught and Lessons Learnt

In this Chapter, we discuss the scope, content, and technical challenges offered up in the construction and delivery of a 10 week long Cloud Computing module that combines discussions of the principles and key characteristics of Cloud Computing with a series of practical exercises and an implementation-based coursework. We present an overview of the core of this module, which starts from the Software, Platform and Infrastructure [SPI] model and builds from this around SOAP and REST, Hadoop, related paradigms such as Grids and Peer-to-Peer (P2P) computing, and the all-important Service Level Agreement (SLA). We further describe the practical exercises undertaken in lab-based sessions, and the nature of the assessment. We conclude with a brief discussion of the lessons that we have learnt to date through this delivery.