Alg_OS—A web‐based software tool to teach page replacement algorithms of operating systems to undergraduate students

Abstract

Operating systems (OS) is an important and mandatory discipline in many Computer Science, Information Systems, and Computer Engineering curricula. Some of its topics require a careful and detailed explanation from the instructor as they often involve theoretical concepts and somewhat complex mechanisms, demanding a certain degree of abstraction from the students if they are to gain a full understanding. The aim of this study was to design and evaluate the software tool Alg_OS. This software tool was designed to serve the learning purposes of the memory management and especially the page replacement algorithms operation to be used in the everyday OS classrooms. The undergraduate students can easily explore the operations of those algorithms through an interaction with Alg_OS user interface. More specifically, students can develop the operation way for each algorithm separately and learn from their mistakes that the software shows automatically in real time. All students performances stored in a database of Alg_OS. A total of 111 final-year undergraduate university students of the Department of Applied Informatics in Management and Economy, Technological Educational Institution of Messolonghi, Messolonghi, Greece were surveyed about their intention to use ''Alg_OS'' in their learning. The results showed that students had positive values indicating a tendency to be favorable towards using Alg_OS in their learning. ß

Design and development of WebUbu: An innovating web‐based instruction tool for Linux OS courses

“…Alg_OS and Proc_OS are two interactive web‐based software tools to address the learning weaknesses of undergraduate students studying Operating Systems. Alg_OS clearly demonstrates the behaviour of page replacement algorithms (Optimal, FIFO, LRU, and CLOCK) through a part of training lessons and provides a convenient way to illustrate page faults and their corresponding page fault costs.…”

Evaluación para el aprendizaje en la asignatura sistemas operativos en modalidad online: un estudio cualitativo basado en la taxonomía de Bloom

“…Por último, en 2013 se publica un trabajo sobre un simulador dedicado exclusivamente a la gestión de memoria: Alg_OS (Garmpis, 2013). El simulador corre sobre un navegador web y está especialmente dedicado a mostrar el funcionamiento de los algoritmos de reemplazo de páginas.…”