OVERVIEW
Practice makes perfect!
The profound changes created by the Internet over the past 20 years have affected 21st Century knowledge workers more than any other group. The ability of individuals to access massive amounts of information on seemingly every subject presents both benefits and challenges to the learner. While having ubiquitous information at one’s fingertips is a luxury unimagined by our forefathers, it also alters fundamentally the way we learn and perform.
Why? Simply put, it means that knowledge is no longer power. Access to knowledge – and the ability to turn that knowledge into action and decisions – has become the new power.
Learning organizations, specifically institutions of higher education, are particularly challenged as they must now recognize this sea change and adjust to it in order to prepare students for these new realities. Doing so is vital for the preparation of students and employees for successful careers in today’s hyper competitive business environment.
In order to succeed in this “brave new world” of information, today’s students and the institutions that educate them must broaden their traditional learning methods to embrace new performance‐centric skills. The new priority is to develop agile minds of resourceful individuals who can locate and master skill sets or the knowledge they need, not simply memorize learning content.
Today’s “new frontier” requires fresh approaches to develop these agile minds. Among these approaches is “experiential learning,” hands‐on personalized practice with live Internet‐based systems and scenario‐based virtual worlds. These remote laboratory‐based learning solutions can bridge the gap between education and experience in such fast‐growing fields as IT, healthcare technology and business consulting.
Offer your students the best of both worlds: a college degree + experience!
State‐of‐the‐art experiential learning solutions enable students in classrooms and eLearning programs to gain the valuable real world experience they need, while providing institutions of higher learning and corporate universities with an arsenal of valuable tools that extend their campuses and engage their students.
One can only imagine what Plato or Socrates would have thought of the Internet. But about one subject they surely would have agreed: Today’s Internet technologies enable students to achieve true learning by experiencing first hand the skills they seek to master. And by directly experiencing success and failure at important tasks, students can develop skills and retain competencies at a far higher level than they would have through traditional classroom instruction alone.
Live Online Labs and Immersive Learning Environments provide your students with a “technology apprenticeship” … hands‐on, real world experience while they are still in school. Experiential Learning provides your students with a more realistic, authentic learning experience. From an instructional perspective, live practice closes the kinesthetic learning loop, thus enhancing cognitive encoding and improving skills retention.
Over the past 15 years, Toolwire’s solutions have proven to increase student satisfaction and improve skills retention. Your students will love it!
CHALLENGE: Experiential Learning is Hard to Deliver
Experiential learning solutions are not easily delivered. Live online labs and interactive virtual worlds require anytime access to real hardware and software via the Internet, no easy task. They must provide a centralized data center, 24x7 virtual learning environment, always‐on customer service, installation and maintenance staff, dynamic hardware deployment platforms, software licensing, and other elements. Such costly infrastructure and expertise requirements are beyond the core competencies of most learning departments, colleges or universities.
Instead, let Toolwire take over all of your lab headaches and deliver state‐of‐the‐art experiential learning for your students. In a matter of weeks, we can help you:
- Lower lab delivery costs
- Avoid lab installation and maintenance overhead
- Innovate curriculum with engaging real‐world experiences, and
- Standardize hardware and software platforms across all campuses and locations.
SUMMARY: Toolwire + Your School = Successful Students
Toolwire’s mission is to sharply increase student satisfaction and skills retention by co‐creating innovative learning programs “brought to life” with hands‐on experiential learning in virtual job worlds. Since our inception as an Online Lab provider for University students in Northern California, we have had a strong commitment to student engagement and Instructional Design.
Together, we can accomplish great things for your students:
- College Degree + Experience
- Better Skills Retention and Kinesthetic Encoding
- Post‐graduation Portfolio of their Experiential Learning Projects
- A Higher Level of Engagement and Interactivity
