Improving Student Assessment of a Server Administration Course Promoting Flexibility and Competitiveness

Contribution: This paper describes a highly flexible design for a master's-level server administration course that uses updated technologies, addresses the most important course design challenges and extracts useful feedback from student work. The main contribution of this design is eliminating the self-regulation challenge students encounter in similar highly flexible computer-related courses. This is attributed to the introduction of orientation lectures and a competitive element; these may have helped students to achieve their goals on time. Background: The Web server administration course on the master's of the Web engineering program was intended to inculcate a series of competences, such as common administration techniques, procedures to increase security, efficient website deployment, and an introduction to clusters and infrastructure deployment automation. The course generally failed to transmit these competencies effectively; complaints were made about the difficulty of the course and the low applicability of its contents. Intended Outcomes: The design facilitates students finding assessment activities that better suit their profiles or previous experience, and enables them to customize their assessment, thus encouraging them and giving future value to their work. Application Design: The course design maximizes assessment flexibility by providing students with many optional activities from which to choose. It also promotes a healthy competitive spirit to improve student's motivation and results. Findings: Complaints about the difficulty or lack of applicability were no longer made. The course is highly valued by the students, achieving a very high pass rate and average score.