When Austin Community College (ACC) set out to launch new coursework for teaching cloud computing from a vendor-neutral perspective, Dr. Michael MacLeod struggled to find a vendor-neutral platform to support hands-on instruction for his students. The course was built around a textbook that introduced students to the fundamental concepts and components of cloud computing — giving them a strong conceptual foundation, but no opportunity for practical application. That changed when UT TACC sent a representative to ACC to introduce the Chameleon platform and offered faculty support to get started. Chameleon provided exactly the teaching environment needed: a vendor-neutral cloud platform where students could explore delivery models like Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) firsthand, bridging the gap between theory and real-world practice.

Building a Course on Chameleon

Chameleon enables the practical application of skills needed to build, configure, and operate a private cloud environment. Rather than limiting instruction to cloud concepts alone, the platform supports a holistic approach that also incorporates system development, project management, and coding. This broader methodology builds students' design, implementation, and communication skills simultaneously.

Since fall 2021, 14 classes on cloud computing have been taught using Chameleon, averaging 30 students per class — reaching over 420 students in total. The skills students develop go beyond fulfilling course outcomes: they leave better prepared for job interviews, stronger in interpersonal skills, and more capable researchers in their own right.

Chameleon's built-in components are rapidly accessible and easy to expand upon, making it well suited for a classroom setting. The coursework runs through the KVM@TACC site on Chameleon. Students begin by creating a Chameleon account and being added to an existing project. From there, they navigate the experiment dashboard, where they learn to configure and launch their own virtual machine instances — selecting boot images, compute flavors, security groups, and network settings through Chameleon's web interface. Once a server is running, students assign it a public IP address and connect to it remotely using PuTTY over SSH. This final step — logging into a live, self-built cloud server and configuring it via the command line — brings the entire learning arc together. Students connect to their instances via SSH, which opens a terminal session on their newly built server and allows them to configure it according to its intended role. Students have, in effect, designed, deployed, and operated their own cloud infrastructure from scratch. This combination of Chameleon's provisioning tools and command-line configuration gives students a complete, end-to-end cloud computing experience without being locked into any single commercial vendor.

By the end of the exercise, students have walked through all three delivery models and experienced firsthand how project management, system development, and virtualization work together in a real cloud environment.

Artifacts and Future Courses

This teaching approach is designed to be duplicated and adapted as an entry-level introduction to cloud computing. A slide presentation covering the course design and experiment workflow is available as a supplemental artifact (upon request from m.macleod@austincc.edu). Beyond the core cloud computing course, this work has also led to the development of additional coursework covering Software Defined Networking (SDN), Data Analytics, the Jupyter interface on Chameleon, and Infrastructure as Code.

About the Author

Dr. Michael A. MacLeod is a full-time professor at Austin Community College (ACC), where he has taught for over 11 years. After a 35-year career in the Information Technology industry, he retired to pursue his lifelong goal of becoming a professor — coming from a family of educators and being the first in his family to earn a PhD. Dr. MacLeod has developed coursework in Data Analytics, Programming, Information Technology, and Cybersecurity for multiple colleges and universities. He is the developer, designer, and author of the Bachelor of Applied Science in Cybersecurity at ACC, and a contributing author to the OpenStax textbook Foundations of Information Technology, for which he wrote the chapter on Cloud Computing and Managing the Cloud Infrastructure.

Most Powerful Piece of Advice for Students Beginning Research

Do the research yourself. The research you conduct will not only build your own knowledge base — it will also help those who follow in your footsteps. Research is time-consuming and difficult, yet rewarding as it comes together. I remember during my dissertation how my committee emphasized the importance of every article, interview, and word I committed to, and how each one contributed something meaningful to the knowledge base we were building for future researchers.

A Few Questions with Dr. MacLeod

How do you stay motivated through a long research project?

My motivation has always been my students. I push myself to develop new experiments for them so they are better prepared as they enter the workforce. I see our students as our future, and that is what drives me in every experiment I create.

What has been a tough moment in your career?

The toughest moments in my career came as I moved through different areas of Information Technology. I started as a network specialist and quickly found that role limited my growth. I pursued certifications in system administration, then database administration, programming languages, and project management. Each advancement brought more responsibility and workload — but in the end, I was able to take on a role where I applied all of those skills to build a network for the State of Texas that exceeded our expectations. The agency ultimately won several awards for that work.

Thank you, Dr. MacLeod, for sharing your work with the Chameleon community!