E-Labs - The Great Experiment

Training network specialists is an expensive business, whether you use a classroom (expensive to equip), simulations (expensive to build) or on-job learning (potential expense of errors off-the-scale). Until now. Remote, online labs allow learners to experiment to their hearts’ content with real hardware and software, solving real networking problems. Someone else buys the kit, someone else worries about what happens when it’s broken. Too good to be true? In this chapter, I talk to the men in white coats to see just how close e-labs get to replicating the real-world experience, without the headaches.

Learning by doing

After more than a hundred years of research into adult learning by some of the world’s most eminent psychologists, we have discovered a few things that we can apply with confidence to the real world of education and training. Like the fact that adult learners want to be in control of the learning process; that they prefer content that is relevant to their current working lives; that they benefit from learning that is enjoyable; and that they like to learn through experience wherever possible. You might say this is just common sense, but evidently not that common as a great deal of the training that we dispense continues to be abstract and irrelevant.

The authenticity of a learning experience is a critical element because it affects the transferability of learning, at least according to the constructivist approach to learning. Simply put, it’s more difficult for a learner to apply an abstract concept to their work than a skill they have practised in a life-like or real-world setting. It’s possible to look at authenticity on a scale. At the ‘very low’ end of the scale we have abstract theory, that you’d find in a book or a lecture. Moving up to ‘low’ we find depictions of real-world situations, such as demonstrations, modelling, worked examples and case histories. At the ‘mid’ point are activities based on real-world situations or opportunities to share real-world experience, through case studies and discussions. On to ‘high’, where we find life-like but artificial activities, such as role-play exercises in a classroom or a simulation delivered from CD-ROM. At the ‘very high’ end of the scale is learning on-the-job; for example, action learning or on-job instruction.

You are not stupid and by now you will have realised just how hypocritical this chapter has become. You wanted to read about e-labs and I’m bogging you down in so-called learning theory. A fair point, so let’s see how this applies to the problems of the training of network specialists. Well, no-one’s saying that technical training won’t benefit from activities that are lower down the scale – a little background theory, a demo or two, an opportunity for discussion with your peers and maybe even a simulation; it’s just that these don’t go quite far enough. At some point every learner needs to get their hands dirty and, as any small child will tell you, that can be a lot of fun. According to Roger Schank, author of Virtual Learning: “Listening to endless lectures and memorising countless facts and figures aren’t fun activities. What’s fun is doing.”