E-labs in action

So what impact can we expect e-labs to make in the UK market in the foreseeable future? Well, there’s no doubt that we’ll be hearing a lot more about them, as an increasing number of providers bring solutions to market, more often than not in conjunction with US partners. We’ll see e-labs within e-learning offerings, as an extra feature within classroom courses, or as an option within blended solutions.

Logilent is developing a lab assessment technology, which will be able to measure not only whether a student carried out the task successfully but whether they chose the optimum path. With this additional capability (not that it will be easy to develop), e-labs could even be used for accreditation. Possibilities also exist for e-labs to be used in recruitment – don’t just take the applicant’s word for it that they’ve got the experience and the qualifications, find out for yourself how they get on when confronted with real-world networking problems. Can’t wait for the new assessment software? No problem, just sit and watch.

In summary, e-labs appear to constitute a genuinely new option for the training of networking specialists. They don’t really threaten the status quo as they are designed to work alongside existing media, whether face-to-face or online, instructor-led or self-paced. E-labs are simple to implement (as long as you’re not the provider), easy to access and relatively inexpensive. Why not try one for yourself and see.