Transforming Software Development Education with CourseMatix
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As the world increasingly relies on software, businesses have struggled to find enough developer talent to build and maintain their applications. IDC estimates the global shortage of software developers reached 1.4 million in 2021 and expects that number to balloon to 4 million by 2025.
Higher education is a great starting point to solve the software development skills shortage. One institution — Spokane Community College — has made strides in enhancing student learning and serving more students with the right mix of software development and IT education while saving educators time.
Building a modern IT education platform
As a first step to improve computer science education and scale the number of students it could teach, Spokane Community College needed a platform that could help instructors more efficiently manage the teaching process. That’s where CourseMatix came in.
CourseMatix is an education platform that delivers the required tools, platforms, and frameworks such as automated grading, assignment tracking, and testing to save teachers time and enhance students’ learning.
CourseMatix is entirely made up of microservices, with significant compute demands because it creates and runs a unique dedicated environment for each student. The platform is complex by nature as it supports a range of technologies that computer science professors need to teach varying coursework. This led to issues with scalability, reliability, and uptime when running on legacy infrastructure.
“We really wanted to no longer manage our infrastructure, leaving us to focus entirely on our platform,” says Aleks Korn, chief executive officer of CourseMatix. “We engaged Google Cloud partner CDW to see how we could simplify and improve our IT environment. The decision was quickly made to migrate to Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE).”
GKE provides CourseMatix with automatic horizontal and vertical scaling to minimize costs and downtime, while removing management and maintenance requirements. This enables CourseMatix to expand the reach of its platform at the lowest possible price and maintain a lean team. CDW helped CourseMatix make this decision to migrate to GKE, managed the migration, and provided guidance on a storage solution.
Because CourseMatix has high data storage volume requirements (given the size of software development assignments) and needs to be fully reliable to ensure work is not lost, it also chose to work with NetApp. NetApp Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud perfectly complements GKE in its highly expandable, reliable, and user-friendly capabilities. The platform was now ready for its U.S. launch at Spokane Community College.
Transforming software development education
Spokane Community College needed a solution to address the challenges facing its professors, particularly with respect to time management.
“Each software development assignment can take an hour to grade,” says Bret Dickey, professor of software development at Spokane Community College. “When you have 100 students, you’re talking weeks of turnaround time to grade those projects. CourseMatix provides immediate feedback, which is a game changer for us as professors and our students.”
Students now complete and submit their assignments with real-world tools, using source control, creating branches to complete their work, and merging those branches to push up to the server where pipelines run the applications.
“It’s making our teaching better overall, including using real-world concepts to enhance teaching and outcomes,” says Dickey.
CourseMatix also provides the tooling to upskill on various programming languages and software packages required for coursework, helping Spokane Community College manage server-side frameworks and client-side languages that each have their own tools.
“Students can access their cloud-based coding environment and all the tools they may need for an assignment are ready to go,” says Karmen Blake, another software development professor at Spokane Community College. “Having a central system for tooling within CourseMatix has been a huge time saver, meaning more time for learning and practice that prepares students for careers as professional software developers.”
Karmen and Dickey have seen marked improvements in their ability to teach and in student learning by using CourseMatix. For example, the platform provides automated hints and varying error messages based on the number of attempts a student has made to solve a problem to help each student along without making the assignment too easy or too difficult.
As a cloud-based platform, CourseMatix also empowers students from a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds to learn computer science.
“As long as students can access the internet on their laptops, they have everything to complete their assignments,” says Karmen. “The cloud-based CourseMatix offering improves efficiency and equity across all students in our computer science programs.”
With a more fluid experience for students and immense amounts of time saved on grading, Spokane Community College is in a better position to increase enrollment in software development classes.
“Now that we have automated our grading and optimized our assignment processes, I am beginning to take on more students and teach more classes,” says Dickey. “I could not have imagined this outcome only a couple of years ago, and it’s all possible thanks to CourseMatix.”
To learn more about how partners help organizations make the most of Google Cloud, you can visit our partner page.
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How G Suite Makes it Easy to Work with Microsoft Office and Exchange
A silent transformation is taking shape in organizations today. Employees are looking for new ways to discover new ideas, and work together anytime, anywhere to ensure businesses are always on.
Without IT’s help that’s not possible. And to make this possible IT teams are working over-time to ensure seamless collaboration by integrating disparate systems. But what happens when IT teams have to marry Microsoft tools with Google?
With G Suite, IT managers don’t have to bother. G Suite interoperates with Microsoft tools. Its multiple features create a more seamless experience between G Suite and Office—including support for user and resource availability lookups between Google Calendar and Microsoft Exchange, as well as the ability to seamlessly collaborate on Microsoft Office documents in real time.
This interoperability ensures that these two tools are designed to work together. There are three pillars that are necessary for interoperability. One, data needs to move from on-premise to the cloud. Two, ensure internal co-existence where some users use Microsoft tools, while others run on G Suite. This interoperability is important to ensure both sets of users can work together irrespective of the tools they are using.
And three, collaborating with external parties that use Microsoft tools—external co-existence—is also
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Video: How Whirlpool’s 90,000 Employees Collaborate to Bring 100 New Products to Market Every Year
As one of the world’s largest manufacturing companies, Whirlpool needs no introduction. The 104-year-old company manufactures home appliances from over 70 manufacturing and technology research centers around the world.
Innovation has been the company’s focus since its inception and that’s evident from the fact that it introduced close to 100 new products in 2017 alone.
For any company to be that innovative, it needs creative minds to collaborate and work towards the same goal, all at once. That’s especially true for Whirlpool that has over 90,000 employees across the globe.
“The need that we have to be connected, the speed with which we need to operate has gone up,” says a Whirlpool executive.
And that’s why, Whirlpool switched to G Suite, Google Cloud’s collaboration and productivity tool that brings together the power of Gmail, Docs, Drive, and Calendar all in one place.
“The opportunity to make a global company feel local, entrepreneurial, and fast-paced, is a big challenge. Google Apps helps us get there. What we’ve really done is create an opportunity for people to collaborate truly on a global basis, regardless of location, place and time. That makes a huge difference in terms of the speed with which we can operate,” says a Whirlpool executive.
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What’s new and next in Android Enterprise
Many of you know Android as a consumer platform that has provided mobile data access on smartphones and tablets to over 2 and 1/2 billion people across the world. But we see Android as an enterprise operating system that spans a variety of form factors and use cases. We work with manufacturers across the globe, who create Android devices compliant with services, like Google Play.
And that means, whether you’re trying to enable employees with smartphones, frontline workers with rugged devices, create digital kiosks for customers to interact with, or build point solutions, like point of sale systems or signage, there’s an Android device that fits your need.
And as an organization, when you know how to build Android apps on one form factor, you can tailor these applications to be redeployed onto another because Android represents a common platform, irrespective of the hardware that you choose.
Learn how Android is tackling the biggest issues facing mobility strategies today, from balancing security and privacy to providing user experience and productivity innovation at scale.
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Are You Suffering from Spreadsheet Paralysis?
Today, within the four walls of your office there’s just one concern everyone has: What do the numbers say?
The answer to that question almost always rests with you. If they get it wrong, everybody gets it wrong. But does it have to be so hard to get it right?
Wading in the waters of endless spreadsheets, trying to figure formulas to slice data in every possible permutation and combination, and still keeping your sanity is a herculean task.
That’s probably why today’s business leaders are most likely suffering from what’s being termed as spreadsheet paralysis. The symptoms include confusion, anxiety and a desire to throw away your computer in the garbage.
It doesn’t have to be that bad. With Explore in Google Sheets,
Watch this video to find out how.
Google’s Latest ‘Carbon Footprint’ can Flag Users about Carbon Emission Levels from their Cloud Usage
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Google Cloud is proud to support our customers with the cleanest cloud in the industry. For the past four years, we’ve matched 100% of our electricity use with renewable energy purchases, and we were the first company of our size to commit going even further by running on carbon-free energy 24/7 by 2030. As we work to achieve 24/7 carbon-free energy, we help you take immediate action to decarbonize your digital applications and infrastructure. We’re also working with our customers across every industry to develop new solutions for the unique climate change challenges that organizations face. Today, we’re excited to expand our portfolio of carbon-free solutions and announce new partnerships that will help every company build a more sustainable future.
First, we’re launching Carbon Footprint, a new product that provides customers with the gross carbon emissions associated with their Google Cloud Platform usage. Now available to every GCP user for free in the Cloud Console, this tool helps you measure, track and report on the gross carbon emissions associated with the electricity of your cloud usage. Of course, the net operational emissions associated with your Google Cloud usage is still zero. With growing requirements for Environmental Social and Governance (ESG) reporting, companies are looking for ways to show their employees, boards and customers their progress against climate targets. Using Carbon Footprint, you have access to the gross energy related emissions data you need for internal carbon inventories and external carbon disclosures, with one click.
Built in collaboration with customers like Atos, Etsy, HSBC, L’Oréal, Salesforce, Thoughtworks and Twitter, our Carbon Footprint reporting introduces a new standard of transparency to support you in meeting your climate goals. You can monitor your gross cloud emissions over time, by project, by product and by region, giving IT teams and developers metrics that can help them reduce their carbon footprint. Our detailed calculation methodology is published so that auditors and reporting teams can verify that their cloud emissions data meets GHG Protocol guidance.
“The power of knowledge combined with the power of technology innovation plays a vital role in proactively responding to the climate crisis we are facing. With Google Carbon Footprint reporting, Atos feeds emissions data in our Decarbonization Data Platform, demonstrating potential emissions reductions from the Google Cloud Platform to our customers. This reporting opens up new levels of emissions transparency, trajectory planning, and data insight to support our customers in meeting, and potentially accelerating towards, their climate goals.”—Nourdine Bihmane, Head of Decarbonization Business Line, Atos
“The capability to measure and understand the environmental footprint of our Public Cloud usage is among the key axis of our sustainable tech roadmap. With Google Cloud Carbon Footprint, we are now able to directly follow the impact of our sustainable infrastructure approach and architecture principles.”—Hervé DUMAS, Sustainability IT Director, L’Oreal
While digital infrastructure emissions are just one part of your environmental footprint, accurately accounting for IT carbon emissions is necessary to measure progress against the carbon reduction targets required to avert the worst consequences of climate change. To help you account for emissions beyond our cloud and across your organization, we’re excited to partner with Salesforce Sustainability Cloud, integrating our Google Cloud Platform emissions data into their carbon accounting platform.
“As we face unprecedented climate challenges, companies across the globe need to embed sustainability into the core of their business in order to meet growing customer and stakeholder expectations, and reduce their environmental impact. Together, Google Cloud and Salesforce Sustainability Cloud can help our joint customers accelerate their path to Net Zero, leveraging data-driven insights and visualizations to track and reduce their carbon emissions to drive sustainable change.”—Ari Alexander, GM of Salesforce Sustainability Cloud.
From information to action
With the gross energy-related emissions footprint of data associated with your Google Cloud usage now available, we’re committed to providing tools to not only measure your carbon footprint, but help you reduce it. We recently launched low-carbon region icons to help you choose cleaner regions to locate your Google Cloud resources. New users who see the icons are over 50% more likely to choose clean regions over others, ensuring their applications emit less carbon over time.
For current Google Cloud users, we’re pleased to announce that Active Assist Recommender will include a new sustainability impact category, extending its original core pillars of cost, performance, security, and manageability. Starting with the Unattended Project Recommender, you’ll soon be able to estimate the gross carbon emissions you’ll save by removing your idle resources. Unattended Project Recommender uses machine learning to identify, with a high degree of confidence, projects that are likely abandoned based on API and networking activity, billing, usage of cloud services, and other signals, and provides actionable recommendations on how to remediate those abandoned projects. By deleting these projects, not only can you reduce costs and mitigate security risks, but you can also reduce your carbon emissions. In August, Active Assist analyzed the aggregate data from all customers across our platform, and over 600,000 gross kgCo2e was associated with projects that it recommended for cleanup or reclamation. If customers deleted these projects they would significantly reduce future gross carbon emissions. Check out this blog to learn more about Active Assist.
Solutions for climate resilience
Many of our customers face difficult questions about how their business impacts the natural environment today, and how it will be affected by climate change in the future. Answering these questions requires rich datasets about the planet, better analytics tools and smarter models to predict potential outcomes. For over a decade Google Earth Engine has supported scientists and developers with hyperscale computing power and the world’s largest catalog of satellite image data. Today, we are delighted to announce the preview of Earth Engine as part of Google Cloud Platform. Now, you can access Earth Engine and combine it with other geospatial-enabled products like BigQuery. By extending Earth Engine’s powerful platform to enterprises through Google Cloud, we are bringing the best of Google together.
Over the past year we’ve worked with a number of organizations to use Earth Engine technology with tools like BigQuery and the Cloud AI Platform to develop new solutions for responsible commodity sourcing, sustainable land management and carbon emissions reduction. Earth Engine enables companies to track, monitor and predict changes in the Earth’s surface due to extreme weather events or human-caused activities, thus helping them save on operational costs, mitigate and better manage risks, and become more resilient to climate change threats. This new offering will wrap the unique data, insights and functionality of Earth Engine with a fully-managed, enterprise-grade experience and reliability.
As we work with our customers to accelerate their sustainability initiatives, earth observation data is proving critical to effectively plan for the long-term impacts of climate change. To extend our geospatial and sustainability use cases we’re also expanding our partnerships with CARTO, Climate Engine, Geotab, NGIS, and Planet to bring their data and core applications to Google Cloud.
These partners will each make their existing platforms and datasets available globally on Google Cloud, giving you low-latency and reliable access to critical data and applications that will inform your sustainability initiatives. By integrating water availability, agricultural data, weather risks, and extensive daily satellite imagery into Earth Engine and BigQuery, you can achieve more ambitious goals for the sustainability of your business and our planet.
Committing to help you meet your climate goals
With each of these tools, we’re working to reduce the barriers you face in adopting more sustainable technology practices. We understand that building more sustainable applications and infrastructure is not easy. You face competing priorities, technical challenges, and the perception that climate action is costly.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Today, we are making a sustainability pledge to you: teams across Google Cloud are committing to eliminating the barriers you face in building a more sustainable digital future for your organization, and will help you take action today to realize your climate goals. We’ll do this in a number of ways:
- In digital transformation projects and workshops, sustainability teams will always have a seat at the planning table, so we can work together on using cloud technology to build a more sustainable future.
- We’re putting low-carbon signals natively into our products to help developers choose more sustainable options early in their application development.
- We’ll ensure carbon impact is measured consistently with other key performance indicators. Leveraging the social cost of carbon, the ROI models and value assessments you conduct with Google Cloud will project your emissions impact too.
- We’ll be transparent about our carbon impact, by publishing third-party reviewed reports and methodologies, so you can trust the data for your own reports and disclosures.
- We’ll continue to work with the industry on best practices, including educational resources like Sustainable IT – Decoded, a new masterclass created in partnership with Intel, that shares the expertise of sustainability thought leaders.
For the next decade we need to work together to avert the worst consequences of climate change. We’ve made tremendous progress in building technology that helps everyone do more for the planet, and we’re excited to see what you do with it. Visit this page to learn more about Google Cloud’s sustainability efforts.
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