The students should, therefore, have the theoretical basics in hand. This one year course in data communications, split between theory and practice is seen as valuable in preparing Information Systems professionals. Figure 3 shows a fragment of an exercise. The students need to set up an environment with users and directory structure in order to do the later parts of the exercise which teach them about security and other management issues. There are 5 total parts in the exercise for the class session and Figure 3 shows Part 1.
All students are supervisor equivalents and the potential for system problems is high.
This is obviously not an option if one is using a production server for the class. It is also important to have the students create users and be required to periodically login as those users so that they can test their designs from a user perspective and not be fooled into thinking that everything is working because the supervisory rights are hiding a multitude of sins. The most difficult topics to handle in the class are server installation and server console commands. The installation is difficult because the class is installing one server and 20 students have to watch with varying degrees of attentiveness to the process. It is usually impossible for students to be fully involved in a decision making process unless they have some responsibility for it or are doing it.