Access to computing resources such as hardware and software for completing class assignments is now required in most curriculums. Many college courses rely on campus computing labs to help students complete their assignments. These labs provide free access to software and are usually open seven days a week for the students to use. While there are certain advantages to using these campus labs, there are also reasons to consider moving the labs to the cloud. The move to the cloud could be driven partly by cost considerations and the availability of a wide range of software. Hardware and software are expensive to maintain on campuses and costly to update. This paper explores opportunities to migrate an on-campus computer lab to a cloud service such as Azure or AWS cloud. The paper starts with a brief literature review on computing labs hosted in the cloud. The experience of moving physical computer labs on campus to virtual labs created on Azure at a four-year university is then shared. In particular, the creation of a virtual machine on AWS and the implementation of software on the machine for completing lab assignments are described. It is followed by a discussion of the pros and cons of online computing labs compared to on-campus labs. The conclusion arrived is that the advantages of moving computer labs to the cloud outweigh the disadvantages due to cheaper costs and the availability of an array of software and hardware in the cloud.

Keywords:  e-learning, cloud computing, virtual machines, computing labs