In the COVID-19 pandemic鈥檚 early months, CU Engineering鈥檚 Integrated Teaching and Learning Program built a unique cloud solution that didn鈥檛 exist before.听
鈥淲e made it possible for 11,000 engineering-affiliated students and faculty to access a computer specially configured to align with engineering curricula, at any time, on any device, from anywhere across the globe, all within a browser of your choice,鈥� said John Franklin, ITL听director of information technology.听
The team鈥檚 initiative created equitable access for students by implementing a bring-your-own-device approach. Some of the challenges of COVID were negated by building a solution free from scheduling conflicts, facility closures, and personal computing power.
鈥淎ll you need is access to a browser to have a full engineering computer at your disposal,鈥� said Brandon Scovronski, ITL Program systems administrator.
Franklin and Scovronski, alongside fellow ITL system administrator David Long, worked nights and weekends most of spring and summer 2020 to produce the solution. Their project, , was recently recognized with a for their work. The award comes with a $1,000 cash prize.听
Students continue to benefit from the solution. Since cloud access was deployed in September 2020, the ITL team recorded on 听more than 22,000 sessions (in which a person logged in and out), 43,000 computer running hours, and other usage trends.听
Bringing engineering software to the cloud
Before COVID-19, many of the college鈥檚 roughly 7,600 students accessed software exclusively on classroom computers or by remote access to those computers.听
That鈥檚 because the average departmental computer contains at least 50 software packages, many of which are costly, require technical expertise to configure and integrate, or have complicated licensing requirements, said Franklin.
In late March 2020, the ITL team began designing a college-wide cloud computing environment accessible to all affiliated students and faculty. Their goal was to deliver the solution by the start of the fall 2020 semester, said Franklin.
They knew remote access to resources at the time would be insufficient if the university continued remote operations.听
Greater flexibility compared to classroom computers
The team鈥檚 cloud infrastructure is also scalable.听
鈥淚f someone said: 鈥榃e need 400 computers tomorrow,鈥� we have the flexibility to deliver,鈥� said Long. 鈥淭he next day those computers can disappear if no longer necessary,听along with the expense.鈥�
The scale goes beyond those numbers too. If 1,000 cloud-accessible computers were needed, the team could support that growth without additional staff.听
Creating the infrastructure 鈥渨as very much a team effort,鈥� said Franklin.听鈥淚t wouldn鈥檛 have happened if any one of us hadn鈥檛 been part of the project.鈥�
The team put in 鈥渁 lot of sweat equity鈥� to deliver a cloud computing solution for the college.听
鈥淲e are proud we built something that didn鈥檛 exist and is capable of handling unknowns as well as it has,鈥� said Franklin. 鈥淲e were proactively trying to solve a problem we thought would exist later. We could equally have been wasting our time but the usage speaks for itself.鈥�