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Sitting in a class, going through a course, completing an exercise or taking a multiple-choice exam does not mean skills were developed or competency built.

Having a well-designed training program supported by hands-on learning is only part of the solution for truly effective skilling. Environments for learning and skills development are table stakes. Organizations are now focusing on how they can assess and validate that learners can apply what they have learned to on-the-job situations and/or measure their level of skills mastery. 

This is the critical difference between “skilling with validated outcomes” and the traditional training approach, which has more attendance-based outcomes (i.e., watched videos or attended the class).

HAVING LEARNERS DEMONSTRATE THEIR SKILLS REQUIRES MORE THAN JUST MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTIONS.

The best way to validate technical knowledge and proficiency is by providing your learners and test-takers the opportunity to “show” what they “know” by demonstrating their abilities in real-world environments that can measure and score their actions against real job tasks and outcomes.

MEET THE BETTER APPROACH TO SKILLS VALIDATION FOR TRAINING AND EXAM TESTING: SCORED LABS.​

Scored labs can automatically evaluate learners in either an exam/quiz format or within a hands-on lab. You can now focus exclusively on the skills the learner acquires, rather than just their book smarts or cramming capabilities on a subject.

Automatic scored labs can help improve results – and increase implementation speed – for the following use cases and question types:
Scored Lab Use Cases
  • Knowledge checks
  • Activity-based assessments (ABAs)
  • Pre-assessments
  • Certification exam prep
  • Practice exams
  • End-of-module or end-of-course assessments
  • Fight against exam fraud, cheating and exam dumps
  • Stacked labs (meaning, a learner must successfully pass a lab before advancing to the next activity)
Exam/Quiz Question Types
  • Multiple choice questions (MCQs)
  • Fill in the blank
  • Scenario-based testing
  • True/False
  • Matching

The real innovation lies in the backbone of hands-on labs: Scoring scripts.

These advanced, yet accessible instructions enable you to track the changes a learner makes in your lab environment, allowing you to automatically check work and measure based on outcomes. If you haven’t gathered already, this also means no more manual scoring!

It all depends on how your team wants to assess your learners’ knowledge. If you can script it, you can build it.

 

Learn what’s possible from the leader in performance testing.

Skillable is a pioneer in cloud-based Performance Testing (also known as Performance-Based Testing or “PBT”). Since 2007, we’ve been helping organizations build their own skills validation programs. Software providers like Microsoft and AWS and certification bodies like CompTIA realize the value this knowledge bears and have trusted us to develop Performance Testing-enabled exams to learners around the world.

Challenge your learners
with Challenge Labs.

In addition to enabling customers to create their own scored hands-on labs, Skillable has created a large catalog of scored hands-on learning experiences across a variety of IT topics, including cloud, security, data, programming and more that enable learners to figure out how to arrive at specific outcomes.

Skillable Challenges can be a great complement to your own labs or can be used on their own to help learners build competency and skills mastery across multiple technologies.

Learn more

How to assess IT lab providers for hands-on skills validation and performance testing.

Here’s a quick guide of requirements to consider when looking for a virtual IT lab partner to help you implement the right skilling strategy and to deliver effective hands-on learning experiences at scale:

 

Management and reporting

Building and delivering

Scaling and flexibility

Capabilities

  • What kind of usage data can they produce – and is it accessible via API for use with business intelligence and analytics software?
  • Can they demo a good lab reporting experience on a third-party LMS?
  • Is there support for all the environments you need (cloud environments, virtual machines, containers, coding, data science, etc.)?
  • Can their platform automatically score a lab based on the results produced by the learner? 
  • Do they have expertise in instructional design and specifically, challenge-centric learning?
  • Have they delivered labs reliably to every region you plan to serve?
  • Can they ensure a consistent user experience for all learners?

Services

  • Do they have proven expertise implementing and maintaining LTI integrations?
  • Do they have content teams staffed by instructional designers and lab developers who can help build custom content if you need it?
  • Do they have teams that know how to write good assessments such as multiple choice and performance testing?
  • Do they have the engineering expertise to build out highly secure, highly custom and highly available environments?
  • Do they have established partnerships with multiple enterprise customers?
"Skillable allows you to spin up real instances of IT environments, and then present issues that have to be resolved by the student. Like taking a real driver's test in a car...or a starship. Very impressed."
Rick Bauer Business Consulting and Project Management

Skilling is the
future of learning and performance testing.

Our team of experts can help you create a skills validation solution that will help you assess your learners’ technical abilities. 

Tried and trusted in Performance Testing and validated skills development.

We’ve helped some of the most technologically advanced and complex organizations in the world achieve their goals. We’re ready to help you achieve yours.

Amazon
Skillsoft