Discover why hands-on, virtual software labs are strategic tools in your training and enablement programs for better user training
Discover why hands-on, virtual software labs are strategic tools in your training and enablement programs.
From accelerating skill development, product adoption and job readiness to lowering costs and validating skills, hands-on user training experiences through hands-on labs are often the missing piece to building more effective and valuable training programs.
Organizations across industries are rethinking how they train, enable and validate skills, not just for their employees, but for their customers, partners and certification candidates too.
Traditional training materials like slide decks, videos, lectures and knowledge checks lay important groundwork. But closing the gap between knowing and doing requires hands-on practice in the environments people actually work in. Virtual training labs (also called virtual IT labs or hands-on labs) provide safe, realistic spaces for user training where people can apply what they’ve learned before the stakes are real.
- For workforce development, that means accelerating job readiness and building the digital skills organizations need to stay competitive.
- For customer enablement, it means driving product adoption faster, reducing support costs and delivering time-to-value sooner.
- For partner enablement, it means ensuring channel partners and resellers have the technical proficiency to sell, implement and support your products with confidence.
- For certification and exam prep, it means going beyond multiple-choice questions to validate that candidates can actually perform the tasks the credential represents, through performance-based testing (PBT) and hands-on practice labs that prepare them to prove it.
Experiential hands-on training platforms like Skillable enable you to provide scalable hands-on training environments and sandboxes, virtual IT labs, development tools and powerful analytics make it possible at scale.
Here are 10 benefits to hands-on virtual labs
1. Hands-on practice in protected live environments
Organizations looking to accelerate digital skill development are investing in hands-on environments. Traditional training methods are ideal for providing an initial introduction to new concepts, skills and best practices; however, to increase knowledge retention and mastery in the environments they’ll be working in, hands-on practice is vital for long-lasting, effective skilling. Training labs can be designed to replicate the live environments where learners can use the real tools or applications to reach a certain objective. By taking a ‘learn while doing’ approach over ‘watch and listen’, organizations will see significant increases in learner retention, engagement, productivity and efficiency.
From most to least effective, tech workers ranked how the different learning approaches benefit their knowledge and skill retention.
2. Drive critical thinking and relevant skills application via engaging hands-on learning experiences
While basic knowledge assessments or click-through labs provide learners with initial context, they fall short of fully engaging learners. Without hands-on problem solving, it’s easy for learners to “tune out” and complete steps without understanding why they are doing what they’re doing.
Practice labs designed from real-world scenarios where people are tasked with reaching a desired outcome using their existing and newly developed skills demand critical thinking and, as a result, are much more engaging. Not only can people see exactly what they’ll be doing once training is completed (a key component of job readiness), they also get a “reality check” of their current skills, showing where more training and effort is needed. Increasing engagement subsequently increases skills retention and satisfaction, enabling organizations to maximize the ROI of their training program.
3. Validate user skills and provide targeted skill feedback
High quality virtual software labs (like those powered by Skillable) can incorporate skill validation. The process refers to continuously assessing, developing and validating learners’ skills in a specific area. More simply, it’s telling learners: “We’ve given you the information, now show us you know what you’re doing.” This approach is highly beneficial as it more effectively identifies and closes skills gaps, improves learner retention and improves training/learning across the enterprise.
Virtual training labs provide an ideal platform for validated learning. Features such as scored labs or real-time Instructor feedback identify where learners’ strengths and weaknesses are and where additional training is needed.
The data from skill assessments can be used to provide more accurate and actionable skill data, enabling businesses to effectively identify and close skills gaps faster.
Skillable’s end-of-lab score reports provide learner-specific feedback and recommended areas for improvement while training and enablement professionals can analyze organization-specific skill data at scale. This is just one example of what’s possible on Skillable’s platform.
4. Easily integrate into an existing learning environment, LMS, LXP, etc.
Despite the overwhelming desire for more learning and development opportunities among today’s workers, employees only have about one percent of their work week to devote to skills development – that’s about five minutes every day. When it comes to incorporating hands-on practice into an organization’s existing platforms, it must enhance and complement learning paths and curriculums as seamlessly as possible.
For example, organizations who leverage Skillable’s API can integrate their virtual training labs into their current learning management system (LMS), customer relationship management (CRM) system or other learning platform instead of sending learners into disjointed platforms. Docebo and Degreed have partnered with Skillable to offer performance-based learning access in their LXP, Academies and Content Marketplace.
5. Scalable while maintaining performance
Organizations who successfully keep up with evolving technology have 1.8 times more earnings and more than double growth in enterprise value compared to “digital laggards.” Virtual training labs enable businesses to keep up with rapid digital change due to their scalable, stable nature. For example, labs can easily be integrated into new learning tools or methodologies as technology evolves. Or as organizations expand worldwide, labs can easily be replicated and scaled via lab templates or lab profiles to meet new needs.
Customer spotlight
Hyland Software improved their practice lab experience by leveraging Skillable’s global data center footprint to provide an excellent learning experience regardless of where their customers are located.
6. In-depth training analytics/reporting for creating tailored learning paths and relevant curriculums
According to Techjury, 95% of businesses cite the need to manage unstructured data as a significant problem. In regard to training, datasets contain valuable insights that can tell employers, training managers or L&D exactly where to focus training efforts. Virtual training labs make sense of data created during training by automatically capturing it and generating a report that presents information in an easily digestible way. The analytics highlight where learners are excelling, need extra training or show where training modules may need to be improved.
For example, Skillable’s analytics break down learner activity into the amount of time it takes users to complete a lab, how many trainees completed courses each month or engagement levels for each course. Using this data, L&D and tech leaders can make necessary improvements, resulting in better skills development for learners.
7. Performance-based testing capabilities for high-stakes skills validation and/or certification
Performance-based testing (PBT) is an outcome-based means of assessing a person’s ability to apply their knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs) in the real-world scenarios they’ll encounter on the job. It goes beyond the limitations of multiple-choice questions (MCQs).
A growing use case is in high-stakes certification because of the numerous benefits of performance-based testing. Organizations with certification programs such as Microsoft, AWS and CompTIA are incorporating scored and skill validation items into their exams to better evaluate a candidate’s mastery of the subject matter.
One of the current challenges with existing high-stake testing environments is that MCQs are susceptible to exam fraud, exam dumps and cramming. A certification candidate who passes the test with flying colors may not fully understand how to apply training material to on-the-job tasks. This threatens to devalue the credential and its reputation, sets the person up to fail in the role and puts the organization, who is relying on that person to have those critical skills, at risk. PBT creates environments where learners have to show and prove they have the KSAs to perform the required tasks.
Other adopters of performance-based virtual labs include IT, L&D and HR to gauge and measure learners’ skills.
Customer spotlight
Quest Software uses skill validation to validate their partners are job ready before selling and implementing their solutions.
8. See which user training programs effectively build skills and which ones need to be restructured
If you believe (or know) there’s too much guessing on whether your training programs are effective in building skills, there’s a good chance your investments aren’t reaching their potential. With companies spending more than $350 billion on training every year (according to Harvard Business Review) and only 30% of employees feeling they have mastery of skills needed to do their job, that’s an enormous amount of waste. This waste can be attributed to numerous factors, but a major contributor is due to poor training delivery and uninspiring content.
Implementing the means to better identify where learners are “getting it” and where skills gaps still exist helps create more agile, adaptable and tailored upskilling programs. Instead of learning this the hard way on the job, hands-on experiences such as virtual labs provide learning environments where learners can practice applying their skills.
This is done through hands-on assessment tools like scored or collaborative labs. Using these insights, L&D and other business leaders can ensure money is not being thrown at ineffective or irrelevant training concepts that are not critical to business performance.
9. Secure learning environments and protect L&D IP
Even your learning environments’ attack surface needs to be assessed, reduced and protected. It should include robust and in-depth security measures that prevent unauthorized users from accessing company training material.
For example, Skillable holds ISO-27001:2013 and SOC 2 Type II certifications. We regularly audit our use of security best practices to meet stringent guidelines and use sophisticated technologies to safeguard technology stacks, accounts, data and networks. Tools like single sign-on, redundant firewalls, intrusion detection systems, vulnerability testing and 24/7 proactive system monitoring ensure training environments are secure. You are safer because Skillable is safer.
10. Reduces the burden of maintaining constantly-changing training environments and materials
Rapid digital change has created several business disrupters, including corporate training. Organizations worldwide struggle to create agile, future-proof training that can scale and adapt as technology changes. Implementing virtual training labs enables organizations to stay ahead of digital change due to their flexible, scalable nature and their unique instructional design methodology.
Learners focus on reaching a certain objective using real-world tools and applications, rather than completing a series of steps. Coupled with targeted, focused training, employees are taught future-proof skills they’ll use again and again rather than on skills that will be obsolete in the next few months.
For example, learn why Majesco moved from sandboxes to labs and saved more than $300k annually in support costs and automated how they validate skills.
Usher in the new era of technical skills development with experiential learning
Hands-on learning environments and practice labs can significantly improve the way you deliver digital training and its effectiveness. From overcoming the limitations of traditional training methods to increasing learner engagement and skill retention, virtual training labs cater to the needs of the modern learner and keep up with rapid innovation.
Virtual lab Hot Takes
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Article updated 8/12/2025.
