The Distance Student Classroom Experience

Our goal is that all of our distance students have the same classroom experience as students actually in the class... How do we do it?

We start by using the best distance meeting tool available. Our partner, www.zoom.us was founded by ex-WebEx employees with a mandate to provide superior web meeting services.

Our distance meeting tool is highly interactive and provides full webcam participation. Students can see the instructor and can elect to allow the instructor and other attendees to see them

Screen and application sharing are provided. Students see the presentation and can watch the instructor highlight, annotate or otherwise interact with the presentation

Students audio options include dial in phone bridge or via Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) connection. Our experience is that VoIP is preferred as the clarity is excellent and there are no long distance charges to attend

Students get access to a full remote lab environment through a simple to use web portal. The instructor can shadow the student, interact with the student's session and help students overcome any difficulty they encounter. Because lab access is via a web portal, students can attend even if they are inside a highly secure corporate network. This is ideal for students who work for the military, financial institutions, hospitals, etc.

Requirements

To attend, each student must have all of the following:

1. A desktop or notebook computer with an HTML 5 enabled web browser (must be Internet Explorer 9 or newer, recent FireFox, Chrome or Safari). Tablets are not recommended due to low resolution, potentially incompatible keyboards, and inability to effectively work with remote labs
2. A monitor with 1080p resolution is preferred (1680x1050 is acceptable). 720p displays (popular on notebooks) are strongly discouraged because of grossly insufficient screen resolution.
3. A quality broadband Internet connection with a minimum of 2mb/s inbound and 500kb/s outbound. Students can test their Internet connection at www.speedtest.net. Cellular data networks are strongly discouraged due to inconsistent speeds, potentially high network latency and the risk of excessive usage charges
4. Audio and video capability. Students must have a PC equipped with a microphone, speakers and a webcam (not provided by ESXLab). A quality USB webcam with either external speakers, or headphones will do the job nicely.