Regarding Best use of Virtual Lab time

[Sturaga86]

Hi,

I am trying to figure out the effective way to use Virtual lab as my current work schedule is so busy.

Currently listening to the videos and then trying to login to virtual lab with the on demand method. If I am doing like that the severs are taking lot of time to let me into the Virtual lab.approx 1.5 hr and it's wasting lot of time.

It looks my other way is to reserve for future time and then practice

Let me know if you use any other approach that would be helpful!

[Cynthia_sas]

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

[Sturaga86]

@Cynthia_sas Thank you very much for your guidance.That's what i was planning to do.