Pi-Scale Mediation: An Empirical Study on Tangible Container Clusters as Pedagogical Catalysts in Distributed Systems Education

• Sheshukumar Vangala

  Author

This paper presents an empirical investigation into the efficacy of tangible, small-scale cloud computing clusters as pedagogical mediators for bridging the conceptual gap in distributed systems education. While cloud computing and microservices have reshaped the software industry, academic curricula often lag due to the abstract nature and high cost of real-world infrastructure. We designed, built, and evaluated KubeCloud, a low-cost, portable cluster comprising four Raspberry Pi nodes running Docker and Kubernetes. This physical learning object served as the centrepiece of a seven-week, problem-based learning activity for engineering students. Through iterative experimentation including cable-pulling fault injection, application-level resilience testing with circuit breakers, and infrastructure-level replication studies, we quantified the cluster's impact on student comprehension. Evaluations based on SOLO and Bloom's taxonomies demonstrated a measurable progression from pre-structural to relational understanding. Findings indicate that tangible clusters significantly enhance the visibility of cloud abstractions, improve grasp of resilience concepts, and align engineering students' sensory-visual learning preferences with complex distributed systems paradigms. The study concludes that such mediated, hands-on environments are not only viable but essential for preparing graduates with the practical, failure-embracing mindset required by modern IT landscapes.

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