An SE Approach for CoCo Learning of Virtual Labs

With increasing computing power, capacity and internet connectivity, the ability to learn has crossed classroom boundaries in the form of online learning. The adoption rate and effectiveness of online learning continues to be an area of research. Collaborative and Cooperative (CoCo) learning involves a joint effort by students to understand and solve problems or tasks. Adoption of open source software has also increased with technology-aided collaboration and cooperation. Leveraging the practices of crowdsourced software development, we propose CoCo Learning approach for technical education using virtual labs. About 145 undergraduate engineering students from various institutes participated in our study for a period of one full semester. About 92% of the students conducted an average of 24 virtual experiments with this approach. Nearly 90% of the faculty from these institutes also confirmed that their students' understanding of courses has improved while delivering tangible software artifacts as outcomes.