Item: Practice Labs
Rating: 7
Author: Dhruv Goragandhi

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

It is used as a training tool for students to perform practicals in a virtual environment without needing the students to have the hardware necessary for the labs. It helps in basic understanding as it provides steps that need to be followed to clear the lab. However, it does not have more complicated labs and is very slow to use.

Pros and Cons

Clear steps
Large number of labs
Easy to use

Needs to be more efficient
The labs need to be more challenging
It needs to have a more stable connection

Most Important Features

Ease of grading
Allows multiple users
Clear steps

Return on Investment

Slow connections
Very basic labs
Crashes often

Alternatives Considered

LinkedIn Learning (Lynda.com), Topcoder, a Wipro company and HackerRank

Practice labs provides better steps for solving labs but due to its inefficiency and slow connection which leads to most students getting frustrated and dropping the labs. However on the other hand practice labs makes it easier to grade multiple students and integrates with canvas very easily.

Key Insights

Do you think Practice Labs delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Practice Labs's feature set?

Did Practice Labs live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Practice Labs go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Practice Labs again?

Other Software Used

HackerRank, Canvas, Topcoder, a Wipro company

Likelihood to Recommend

It works well to explain basic concepts to students, and helps them understand these concepts by a step by step process in the lab. But it does not really challenge the students into thinking for themselves or help them gain better skills, it only helps them understand a concept. Due to its slow speed it does prove difficult to use.

Not a great product

Overall Satisfaction with Practice Labs