Fed Ex: The Virtual Classroom's "Real" Side.

At TrainingCity our classes are known for intense, Hands ON labs. We pride ourselves on keeping lecture time to a minimum and Hands ON time to a Maximum.

The key is building "Real World" labs and group workshops that are challenging and educational; after all, the only thing worse than a boring lecture is a useless lab!

If Hands ON labs are the key to learning in your classroom, what happens when things go Virtual?

At TrainingCity we examined the option of using the Web Ex "virtual lab" configuration, but with over twenty Hands ON classes, all with complex labs using incredibly sophisticated software and hardware, WebEx's solution just wasn't up to the task. To make matters worse, the WebEx pricing model was rigid and completely out of tune with the realities of our lab requirements.

In the end we asked ourselves one fundamental question: What must be "Virtual" in a Virtual classroom; the lab equipment or the students?

Our goal in building a Virtual classroom is to accommodate students who for one reason or another will not be physically present in one of our classrooms. That doesn't mean we can't send the classroom to the student!

We developed fully functional "suitcase" modules for each class that contain all the necessary equipment and software to run each classroom lab.

We use Fed Ex ground service (and sometime Fed Ex Express) to deliver these "Suitcase Labs" to Virtual Students around the world. When you sign up for a TrainingCity Virtual class, we immediately schedule the delivery of a "suitcase" containing the same lab equipment you would be working with in our real classroom.

Is this expensive? Yes....But:

This brings up another critical concept regarding Virtual Classroom training. Virtual Training, as I have been saying for over two years, is NOT e-learning. Whenever I think of e-learning I think, "cheap, out of date, expensive to develop". E-Learning promised to deliver "cheap" training, Virtual Classrooms promise to emulate a real World classroom. Virtual Training is NOT e-learning, and it will never be "cheap" to deliver.

If you think of a Virtual Classroom as the equivalent of a Live, Instructor Led, class, then the idea of spending an extra $100 or so to Fed Ex real classroom equipment to a student starts to make sense... After all, it's still cheaper than the student flying to your training center.