Cloud-based virtual desktop environment for advanced online master´s courses

The demand on online courses to achieve higher education skills and knowledge has been rising during the last years. More and more people study academic subjects in parallel of having part-time or even full-time jobs. One of the most important challenges of e-learning solutions is to reproduce the features of a higher education institution´s campus as completely as possible to students who attend online courses. While there is a large market of e-learning tools, the majority of them come with a lecturer-oriented and material-based view only. When using single tools, a lot of aspects are not covered, for example the interaction between learners is often not paid enough attention to. In literature it has been shown that the social interaction of students on a classical university or college campus has a very positive effect on learning. To enable social interaction for online students, typically a conglomerate of software tools has to be provided: Classical e-learning tools to distribute content, tools for video conferencing and tools for social networking. While offering just a selection of tools in parallel might be able to cover the requirements formally, it often introduces unnecessary complexity. Several login procedures, different user interfaces and time-consuming ways of organizing data storage can render tools very unattractive. Especially when your typical addressees are roaming students who spend time for learning in alternating environments, there is a high demand for cloud-based virtual desktop solutions, which provide a fast and simple way to start learning or interacting with fellow students, wherever a student stays at the moment. In this work-in-progress paper we present our idea of a cloud-based virtual desktop environment approach while focusing especially on engineering courses and their requirements