The GRID®: How it Works

"We must set as a standard that anything we do in the area of distance learning has to be equal to or greater than the experience of being our classrooms." - Mike Landau, President & CEO, SetFocus

To accomplish this goal, SetFocus spent 2 years designing an on-line training system that pays attention to all the components of its successful instructor-led training programs— support materials, visuals, communications, interactions and collaborations, and more — to make it your success.

Communicate! Interact! Collaborate!...On-Line

What makes The GRID® unique and far superior to traditional synchronous on-line learning environments is its combination of seamless audio / video conferencing combined with real-time access to fully loaded developer environments via Windows Virtual Machines.

Communicate!

In order to bring our classrooms into your home, SetFocus has collaborated with Polycom, the industry's leading video conferencing provider, to ensure the highest quality of audio and video communications between each GRID student and his / her instructors and peers.

Polycom's TV-like video quality with fluid, precise motion handling provides the most natural video communications experience possible.

Polycom's audio technology provides user with 14 kHz audio in stereo with Polycom StereoSurroundTM. That's 400% greater than that of telephone quality! Polycom StereoSurroundTM gives SetFocus students in a video call that spatial relationship of speakers to their voices. For example, the voice from a person speaking from the left side of the room will be projected through to the left speaker of the video system on the far end. The result is that voices appear to be generated from their respective sources in the room, just as if you were in the same room.

Interact!

When you Plug into The GRID® you will be in actual instructor-led lectures and labs being conducted in our physical facilities in New Jersey.

Traditional on-line learning solutions utilize instant messaging, chats and polls to communicate with their remote students. With The GRID®, don't push a button to ask a question or type it out in a chat window ... simply speak.

With The GRID®'s 2 way video and audio capabilities, on-line students’ communication with their in-classroom peers and instructors simply by raising their hand and asking a question.

Collaborate!

In addition to our partnership with Polycom, SetFocus has utilizes technology from Live Meeting^TM and NetSupport School^TM to aid in collaboration between students and instructors.

Given the nature of developer training, our instructors are constantly utilizing Visual Studio and other environments to demonstrate a concept. Rather than having an on-line student view this demonstration by watching a projection on the screen through the Polycom video, our instructors "push" the content directly to the on-line student's PC via Live Meeting. Through this, an on-line student has the same demonstration occurring on his / her pc as the in-class students are viewing on the projection screen.

Labs are an extremely crucial component to developer training. In order for a concept to truly be absorbed a developer must write code! Through our partnership with NetSupport, our instructors have the capability of connecting to each and every student’s pc to view content in real-time, take control and manipulate code, if necessary. Though geographically separated, NetSupport School creates a scenario that allows the instructor and student to collaborate as if they were sitting side by side in the classroom.

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