CloudSpace: A Web Development Environment for CS1 Courses

Since a massive decline of computer science graduates in 2002, computer science departments have been unable to reach previous graduation rates. In wake of this dramatic loss of graduates, researchers have been searching for the reasons students are avoiding computer science and choosing other majors. To combat this decrease in computer science graduates, the CloudSpace environment provides additional context to entry level computer science courses. This shift in context removes boring assignments from the early computer science curriculum and replaces them with more engaging web centric assignments. The CloudSpace environment presents a model that maintains student’s focus on core computer science competencies while providing a highly simplified web development toolkit to develop feature rich AJAX web applications. This thesis includes the rational and implementation of a cloud based hosting service and a highly abstracted web tool kit that enables students to replicate modern web applications. That this work received support from the National Science Foundation