Abstract—The outbreak of COVID-19 has changed all our lives. In academia, we have had to take another look at how we teach and deliver courses. Learning was not put on hold as a result of the pandemic. We had to look at innovative ways of teaching and providing content to students. At Illinois State University, we have technology labs that play an essential role in fulfilling the lab requirements for technology-based courses. Students were not able to come to the physical labs as a result of the pandemic. This article outlines some of the strategies used to meet the lab requirements in ways that did not compromise the quality of education delivered. Virtualization technology made it possible for students to complete their lab requirements from anywhere in the world. All they needed was access to a computer and a reliable Internet connection. In the virtual environment, resources are provided virtually instead of in a physical way. Furthermore, system virtualization uses an encapsulation software layer surrounding an operating system. It provides computing functions such as input, output, storage, and processing in the same way as physical hardware. While virtualization has been around for decades, it has gained popularity in the last decade. The benefits of virtualization were leveraged during the pandemic to provide students with labs in a virtual way. Virtual desktop pools were created, and students were given access to the pools. Virtual desktop pools, which are a group of virtual desktops hosted on identically configured virtual machines, were deployed for students. The virtual desktop pools were loaded with software that students use in physical labs. The software included Visual Studio, NetBeans, Packet Tracer, and Scene Builder. Because of the implementation of virtual desktop pools, students could complete required labs and meet all the course outcomes. 
 

Keywords—virtual desktop pools, virtualization, virtual learning, e-learning 

Cite: Stephen Mujeye, "The Use of Virtual Desktop Pools to Meet Course Outcomes during the COVID-19 Pandemic," International Journal of Learning and Teaching, Vol. 10, No. 4, pp. 491-496, 2024.

Copyright © 2024 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided that the article is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.