Hi:
We recommend using the future reservation method. Here are some tips that other students in the SAS Academy have shared with me.
When students make a reservation, they need to be aware of how the reservation system works, so they do not accidentally lose time. Here’s how the reservation works – as soon as the reservation is ready, the “clock starts ticking”. So if a student asks for a reservation to be ready at 3 pm, but they don’t log on until 3:15 pm, the time starts deducting from 3 (when the image was ready for them) NOT 3:15. In a similar fashion, if they ask for a reservation and get called away and never have a chance to log on, they will get deducted for the whole time -- essentially, they've used up the time because the image was up and waiting for them.
So that’s why we recommend making the reservation for a future time – so the student knows exactly when the image will be ready and they can log on. If a student is going to “miss” a reservation, it is better to take a few minutes and cancel the reservation in order to return the time to the allotment.
We allocate SAS Academy e-learning students with Virtual Lab time to practice based on the number of hours that the in-person students use in the 12 weeks session. The Cary students use the same Amazon Virtual Lab that the e-learning students use. If you purchase all 5 modules, you get a total of 200 hours of Virtual Lab time. If you only purchase 1 level or the other, you get 100 hours split between the modules in your package.
We do not intend for a student to let the Virtual Lab sit idle while they listen to the lectures. My students have shared this approach: a student should listen to all of the lectures in a chapter or lesson and watch all the demos -- so they have an understanding of everything in the chapter or lesson. Then, make their future reservation when they have enough time to devote to a practice session. You should make your future reservation for more time than you think you'll need -- like for 3 hours or 4 hours (instead of the default 1 hour limit). Then plan to do all the exercises in a chapter/lesson at one time. When you've have finished work on everything for that Chapter/Lesson, you can go back and revisit an exercise again or end the Virtual Lab reservation and move onto the next chapter/lesson. But, it is important to remember to cancel the reservation so that any unused hours are returned to your time allotment. The only way that I can envision a student not having enough hours is if they open an image and let it sit idle while they listen to lectures for the first time.
I hope these suggestions are useful to you. Others may have other approaches. These are what I've compiled from the students I've worked with.
Cynthia