In these tough economic times almost all organizations are cutting back on expenses. Often the first line-item to go by the wayside is training. When you work for an IT training company you feel this first hand. However, much of the cost of employee training involves travel expenses like flights, hotels, meals etc. For this reason, we’re seeing many of our customers switch to the virtual classroom. Same training, same instructors, no travel, less cost, more green.
I am the first to acknowledge that it’s best to have all my students in one room where we can see each other face to face, focus on the task at hand, handle questions interactively and follow the official curriculum with lots of hands-on exercises. But if this is not always possible, and in this economic climate it certainly is not, so we need to consider alternatives. And as an instructor, I don’t want to be stuck in airports on Sunday and Friday nights and neither do my students.
I love teaching in the virtual classroom. I get to work from my home office, no commute. I teach the same courses, same materials, same hand-on labs all virtually over the internet. We use a partner company iLinc that hosts the virtual classrooms. In this environment, I can show the slides, lecture, whiteboard, accept questions via chat or microphone, give polling questions and broadcast results immediately. I like to demonstrate SQL Server frequently and I can do this by sharing my desktop out to the students. All through the web.
In the Lab environment, which we host ourselves, we use Remote Desktop to allow the students to connect to our Data Center in Raleigh, NC. Once they are logged in to their “pod”, they have access to multiple Virtual Machines to perform the lab work. We use either VMWare ESX or Virtual PC/Server depending on the course. The end result is, once logged in, the student can work on the labs using the same instructions that they receive in the “physical classroom”. If a student has trouble during a lab, I can take over their session via remote control and show them how to troubleshoot. They can watch me as I look for the issue that’s causing the problem and try to fix it. Or I can watch them recreate the issue and explain steps for resolution. During a lab, I have to set expectations that multiple students may have issues at the same time, so I send a chat saying “hang on, I’m helping so-and-so” but most times the need for direct help is randomly dispersed. The nice added-value feature of the virtual classroom is that the VMs are available to the students 24 hours a day. This means that they can catch up on lab work later if they get called into a production crisis. Or maybe they prefer to work in the morning or evening depending on their time zone. My lecture sessions are always live, but they are also recorded and can be replayed later including the demos. The recordings are available for 30 days after the class finishes.
In terms of video, we have chosen to avoid it completely. It’s expensive in terms of bandwidth and adds little value. We prefer to have a snapshot photo displayed when I have “the floor”. Students can upload their own photo and when they ask a question, the other students can see who’s talking. A friend suggested I upload a photo of Einstein, but I think he was being sarcastic.
All in all, the technology that enables the virtual classroom is amazing. I can conduct the training from anywhere in the world and my students could be any place too. But when the class is over, it’s over. No commute, no rush to the airport. It reminds me of a sign I used to see on an apartment block next to a frequently congested highway in Boston – “If you lived here, you’d be home now”. Except after a virtual class, I now say “I do live here and I am home now”. And my students can say the same thing.
Cheers
Brian
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