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As online education continues to grow, new and innovative ways are needed for these educational institutions to interact with distance learners. Online educational institutions need to compete with traditional brick-and-mortar institutions and training centers to offer distance learners an interactive environment. Distance learning institutions traditionally have had a disadvantage in this area. In this paper we will examine online laboratories, and compare online learners surveyed results to two other interactive technologies. This paper seeks to examine the advantages of online laboratories, and how these technologies try to reduce the competitive gap between distance and traditional educational settings.

Several techniques have been used to provide hands-on educational experiences to online learners, including remote labs, simulation software, and virtual labs, which offer a more structured environment, including simulations and scheduled asynchronous access to physical resources. This exploratory study investigated how these methods can be used from the learner's perspective to enhance the online learning experience by improving its effectiveness and maintaining students' satisfaction while keeping the same level of standards and outcomes as face-to-face courses. Current and former online learners from several community and four-year colleges were surveyed to evaluate their experiences for utilizing different networking lab techniques. An analysis of survey results highlights the importance of lab accessibility to learner satisfaction and evaluates the interaction between learner experience and preference for networking labs. These results are used to recommend the best implementation practices and to guide future studies in online networking labs.

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