Effectiveness of Simulated Software Labs vs. Live Lab Environment.

[Eric Z]

Hi everyone,

I’m curious about your thoughts and experiences regarding lab environments. Personally, I prefer a live lab environment (even though it can be expensive). From my experience, learners trained in live labs tend to feel far more confident when working in live environments compared to those who only use simulated software labs.

While simulated labs are effective for certain tasks, I’ve noticed they often fall short in giving learners hands-on experience with setup, installation, and troubleshooting—especially for A+ and Network+.
Ideally, I think a combination of both approaches works best, if possible.

What’s your approach? Have you noticed a similar difference in learner outcomes between simulated labs and live labs?

Thanks in advance for your insights!

 

[Rick Butler]

I think *everyone* here would prefer that live lab environment. The things that I've noticed is that in live environments, you have real problems that sometimes need to be fixed - which is a learning experience in of itself. Plus it's live fire - with all the functions intact.

Sim environment, for me, is a mixed bag. For example, I'm wading through the CertMaster Perform for SecurityX now - and the first lab - well, my browser hated it (running Linux Mint and Edge). So these kinds of hiccups are typical of the sim environment - things that you wouldn't normally see in the field.

But I'll re-iterate - live is ALWAYS better, IMAO.

/r

 

[Gregory Childers]

Working in professional adult education, I struggled to do any labs with the students because of time restrictions. I had five eight-hour days to go through the lecture and class discussion, and rarely had time for additional lab work, unless it was outside of class hours. As a workaround, I did as many live demonstrations as possible, or I would show short videos on a topic.

Professional adult education, unfortunately, is more about selling classes than adding value. Butts in seats and returning students were more important than legitimate learning.