Assisting Students with Their Labs

Instructors work closely with students to ensure that the students are engaged and able to complete their labs. This article covers many of the ways that an instructor can assist their students through monitoring and file sharing, as well as boosting engagement through discussions, activity assignment, and Shared labs.

Best Practices

• When monitoring labs, you can change the Layout from small, medium, and large tiles, as well as list view. This allows you to potentially display your whole class so that you can easily see who may need help and what the progress of the students is.
• On the Lab Monitoring page, you can also send your students a message using the Send Notifications option. This allows you to alert a student before taking over their lab so that you don't disrupt them.
• When sharing files with students through the Instructor Files feature on the Monitor Labs page, the total file size that you are able to upload at one time is 2GB. Each file must be less than 200MB.
• When using Shared Lab Environments in classes, we highly recommend manually assigning labs to students using the Assign Access to Class Activities feature to ensure that students do not see labs that they should not launch. This helps keep things straight for the students.
• Badging is a great way to help boost student engagement, enthusiasm, and community within your organization. Please reach out to your Skillable Contact if you are interested in learning more about badging through the Skillable Training Management System.
• Discussions can lead to broader student engagement and a sense of community and collaboration within your organization. If your organization is looking to take advantage of Discussions, we highly recommend setting up a framework of topics and posts to help students get started. One example is setting up a topic for each course to allow students to post their own questions.

How do I assist my students with their labs?

During class you may want to watch your students' progress in their labs. This can be done with the lab monitoring tool.

By using lab monitoring you can see a listing of all students' running labs which includes:

• Name of the lab being worked in.
• Active virtual machine in the lab.
• How long the lab has been running.
• Amount of time since the student's last activity was performed in the lab.

You can also take actions through the lab monitoring tool like:

• View the student's lab as they work in it.
• Take control of the student's lab.
• Share files with students.

To monitor and assist students:

1. Select My Calendar at the top of any window.
2. This will open up your Instructor Calendar. Find your class in the calendar and select on the class name to open the Class page. You may also access your current class from the My Classes link on the top navigation bar.
3. Select Monitor Labs.
4. A new browser tab will open up with all your class's active lab instances displayed with pertinent data about their labs. Select the Monitor Student to view a student's activity as they work in a lab.
5. You then have the option to select Take Control to work through an exercise with a student.

How do I share files with students?

There may be times when you wish to share files with your students. This is simple to do. There are two paths to do this depending on your permissions. You can distribute files from your computer to your students from the Manage Files link on the Class Profile or through the Lab Monitoring tool.

Manage Files

Instructors (and administrators) with the proper permissions can use the Manage Files functionality on a class to share files with students in their class.

To do this:

1. Navigate to the Class Profile page for the class you want to share files with.
2. Select Manage Files in the quick links bar.
3. On the Class Files page, select Upload File.
4. Select Choose File next to File and upload the file you want to share.
5. Change the Name, if necessary and add a Description that will be visible to the students and other instructors.
6. Ensure the that in the Visibility field, the Students checkbox is checked. If it is unchecked, students will not see the files on their class enrollment.
7. Select Save.

Additional files can be uploaded by repeating Steps 3 through 7, ensuring proper visibility for each file. Anyone with permission to access the Manage Files link and Class Files page can manage the availability and visibility of all files uploaded regardless of who originally uploaded them.

Files that are set to be visible to students are available to them on their Class Enrollment page in the Class Files section under Activities. To access these files, they can select the name of the file to start the download process to their machine.

Monitor Labs

There may be times when you want the files to be easily accessed by the students while they are working on a lab without having to leave the lab.

For this scenario, you should use the Monitor Labs tool:

1. Navigate to the Class Profile page for the class.
2. Select Monitor Labs.
3. A new browser tab will open up with all your class's active lab instances displayed. In the Instructor Files box, select Share Files.
4. In the Instructor Files for... dialog, select Upload File.
5. In the Upload Instructor File dialog, enter the Display Name for the files and select Choose files.
6. Navigate to the file(s) you want, select it and select Open.
7. Ensure the file(s) you wish to share are listed. Select OK through the steps to add the file(s).
8. After replication, ensure the file(s) you wish to share are checked and select OK.

A pop-up will appear in each student's launched lab, regardless of what virtual machine they are working on, informing them that a file has been shared by the instructor and how to access that file.

How do I run a shared labs class?

Shared labs allow students to participate in the Shared lab environment for activities like cyber-range, collaborative learning, or role-playing. Shared labs classes have a lab that the class shares, working in it at the same time, and participant labs for the students to access the shared environment lab.

Qualities unique to shared environment labs

Participating in a class using shared labs operates differently than other classes with labs, please read through this section to be aware of restricted availability for using the labs, launching of the shared environment lab, setup of access to participant labs, and appropriately saving or cancelling labs.

Lab access limitations

Lab environments in a shared labs class can only be used while the class is in session.

• Lab access is limited to days and times of the scheduled class sessions, for example, if class is scheduled Monday through Wednesday from 8:00am – 12:00pm, no labs can be launched until 8:00am or after 12:00pm on class days.

• No post-class lab access is given for classes with shared or participant labs.

The Shared Environment Lab

The shared environment lab is not displayed as a class activity.

• The shared environment lab launch link is only accessible to the instructor.
• By default, the shared environment lab is only launchable by the instructor.
• The shared environment lab’s settings may be set to allow for the shared environment lab to be launched when a student launches their participant lab.
• Instructors may use the disable class activities feature to control when students can launch their participant labs.

Instructor launch of the shared environment lab

When an instructor wishes to launch the shared environment lab:

1. From the Class profile page, select the Monitor Labs link, to open the class's lab monitoring page in another tab.

2. Under the class information on the monitor page, select the link beside the rocket icon displaying the shared environment lab's name to give access to the shared environment lab to your students.

Student launch of the shared environment lab

A shared environment lab can have a setting enabled allowing students to launch it. When this is enabled, if the shared environment lab is not launched yet, when the first student launches their participant lab then both the participant lab and shared lab are launched. If this setting is enabled, an awareness notice stating "TBD" displays to the instructor on the class page.

As the instructor, you can control when students have access to launch their activities through the disable class activities feature. This feature must be enabled on the course to be available in a class. When used, the class activity has a View Activity Access link, which allows you to see, add, and remove students who can access the activity. Activity access automatically resets for students within approximately 30 seconds.

Student labs

Participant labs are in the class for students to access the shared environment lab. There may be one or more participant labs depending on the Course objectives.

• Participant lab(s) are consumed by students.
• Instructors teaching a class with multiple participant labs can assign each student access to a lab(s).

Participant labs are launched by students by selecting the activity's Launch button. Opening the participant lab gives students access to the shared lab environment when it is running.

Having multiple participant labs available to all students may lead to mishaps if a student(s) launches the wrong lab. You have the ability to assign each student to the participant lab they should use and prevent students from seeing the labs they should not access. Using the assign access to class activities feature, each activity enabled for assignment will only be seen and accessed by students assigned to it. This feature must be enabled on the course to be available in a class.

When used the class activity display a link is disabled and displays a message stating the activity is disabled by the instructor. Access is disabled by unchecking the Enabled checkbox on a class activity and re-enabled by checking it again; activity access automatically resets for students in approximately 30 seconds.

Saving and Closing Labs

Shared environment labs and participant labs can be saved and closed as normal to preserve work or complete a lab. Shared lab networks are still available, even when a shared environment or participant has saved their Lab.

Cancelling Labs

Work in a lab is lost when a lab is cancelled.

• A Participant can reset their participant machine(s) by using the lab menu to choose Exit Lab and then select End Lab in the lab window. Cancelling a participant lab does not affect any other participant labs or the shared environment lab.
• If the instructor exits the shared environment lab by cancelling it, it also cancels all the labs in the shared environment, including the participant lab instances.

How can I assign access to a class activity to different students?

You can assign specific class Activities to each student, enabling them to see and access their assigned activities while other students may see and access different activities. This is helpful for classes where sets of class activities should be completed by different students, like classes using a shared lab environment.

A course must be set up for Instructor-Led training and then any activity in the course can be set to assign manually to students (note: all activity types can be set to manual assignment). When the course is used to create a class, operations managers and instructors can manage the activities to assign or unassign them to one or more students within the class.

Only students assigned an activity can see or launch it. If an activity is not assigned to any students, then no students will see it. Newly assigned activities display to students within a few seconds, while removed assignments may take up to 25 seconds to be expunged. If the student launched the activity prior to removal, a message displays, stating: Sorry, you don’t currently have access to this activity. Please see instructor.

Setting manual class activity assignment for students is a different from the disable class activities feature, which an instructor uses to disable an activity for all students in their class, but the activity is still visible to students.

A class based on a course with manually assigned activities must assign students to the activities. Any activity with manual assignment enabled has a link to View Activity Access, which can be opened to see the students with access, if no students are assigned then none of them can see the activity. Any activity not requiring manual assignment is seen by all students.

Class Setup

1. Create a class using a course with manual class activity assignment added.
2. On the class profile, scroll down to the Activities section, select the View Activity Access link on an assignable activity.
3. An Activity Access dialog opens, if students have access to the activity they are listed here, if no students are added, a message displays: There are currently no students assigned to this activity. To revise student access, select the Edit Student Access link.
4. To add students, select the Add Students link. This opens the Choose Students dialog.
5. Search for and select any enrolled students to add access to the activity and select OK. This returns you to the student activity access page.
6. Remove student access by selecting the X to the right of their name.
7. Select Save to update and return to the class profile.

How do I disable class activities for all students?

You can control when and if students have access to class activities, including labs, external links (video, document and/or website), assessments and SCORM modules (Note: Surveys cannot be disabled).

Instructors can enable or disable any activity in classes they are assigned to teach, and Operations Managers can disable activities in classes they manage. Enabling or disabling an activity applies that setting for all students in the class.

All class activities are enabled by default. Instructors and Operations managers have a check box on each activity to disable or re-enable it; there is also a select all check box at the top of the activities list.

Simply uncheck the Enabled box to disable the activity or check it again to re-enable it. Students see the activity’s availability within 30 seconds. You can also check the Disable all activities box to disable all activities in the class.

Students have a Launch button for all enabled activities. Disabled activities appear slightly grayed out with a Disabled by Instructor message for students and the Launch button is not available.

How do I issue badges to students in my class?

You may be asked to manually issue badges to students in your class rather than only having Badges issued automatically by meeting the requirements to earn an achievement.

With the proper permissions, you can do this directly from your class' Roster page either to one student at a time or in a batch. In both cases, you will receive an error message if you issue a badge to a student who already has it.

Individual User Issuance

Use this method if you only need to issue one badge to one student. To issue the badge:

1. On the class' Roster page to the right of the student, select the Issue a Badge icon. This will open the Choose Badge dialog and only displays badges that can be manually issued.
2. In the Choose Badge dialog, search for and select the badge you want to issue and select (Select a Badge). The button will briefly change to Successfully Issued Badge before closing the dialog.

Batch Issuance

Use this method if you want to issue multiple badges to one student or one or more badges to multiple students. To do a batch issuance:

1. On the class' Roster page, select Issue Badges in the quick launch bar.
2. On the Issue Badges page under Badges, select Add Badges.
3. In the Choose Badges dialog, select the badges to be issued and select (Select a Badge). Only badges belonging to the same organization as the class and have been marked to allow manual issuance will be listed.
4. Under Students, select Add Students.
5. In the Choose Student(s) dialog, select the student(s) to whom to issue the badge and select OK. If the instructor is an organization instructor (not a contract instructor), only enrolled students from the instructor’s organization in the class are listed. If the instructor is a contract instructor, all students enrolled in the class are listed.
6. Review the listed badges and the students and select Issue Badges. A list of the students and the badges issued to them will appear at the bottom of the page under the heading “The following badges were successfully issued:”

How do my students and I participate in discussions?

All users are permitted to participate in discussions by default. When a discussion is associated with a course, the discussion becomes available through the following pages depending on the user's access:

• Course
• Class
• Class Enrollment
• Course Assignment
• Simple Course Assignment

A discussion has four main components users will interact with:

1. Topic – listed on the left side of the main Discussion page and used to organize/display posts.
2. Post – top level discussion item that can be added to a Topic. These are listed in date/time order on the left side of the Topics page and show the number of responses. A post consists of:
   1. Post Type: a question or a discussion. The appropriate icon will be placed on it.
   2. Topic: the Topic to which the post is associated.
   3. Title: a headline to draw attention to the post.
   4. Your question or idea: the main content of the post. This is an HTML field.
3. Response – second level discussion item. Users can respond to any Post. The responses are indented below the full Post in date/time order when the user selects the Post.
4. Comment – bottom level discussion item. Users can comment on any response. The comments are indented below their respective responses in date/time order.

To navigate in the discussion (you can add a post at any point either using the form or the Add Post link);
• Select a Topic to view/add posts:
• Select a Post to read and respond to, if wanted (notice the breadcrumb above the post titles):
• Add a new Post, Response or comment, if wanted. (Each activity has an HTML field for its content; only posts have a title.)
• Like or unlike the Post, a Response, or a Comment.

All posts, responses, and comments will have:

• Date and Time of the post (0 GMT)
• Name of the poster
• Poster's image (if available from their User profile)

When a Staff member posts, replies, or comments, they will be marked with a special badge.

How can I be notified of activity on a discussion?

To be notified of activity on a discussion, you can follow Topics and/or Posts on them. You decide if you are notified by email or as an announcement in the Message Center. Both will provide links back to the Topic and Post which has had the activity.

To follow a Topic or Post:

1. Select the Star next to the Topic or Post you want to follow. This will open a dialog.
2. In the How would you like to be notified? dialog, select E-mail or Message Center and select OK.

When a participant, including you, posts on a topic you are following, you will be notified. The same is true when responses are added to a post you are following. You will not be notified when the following occurs:

• Someone comments on a response to a post, regardless if you are following the post or topic it is under.
• Someone likes a post, response, or comment.
• Someone responds to a post in a topic you are following. Only posts trigger emails or announcements for followed topics.
• A topic or post you are following is deleted by a moderator or administrator.

The Announcements and emails will include the name of the topic or post which has had activity and a more or a **here **link. These will open the discussion in a new tab at the item you are following.