A One-Year Review of SANS Live Online

A critical review of SANS Live-Online Training

Since the beginning and throughout the pandemic, we had assumed that students were not as happy with the Live Online experience as they had been at conferences. Today, with a year of experience under our belt, we got the results of an analysis of student ratings of content and instructors from the Live Online platform. Surprisingly, students rate their experience just as high – and for some courses even higher – as they did for those same courses and teachers at in-person conferences.  Even students’ GIAC certification test scores are higher than historical averages.

It turns out that the interactive nature of courses combined with very talented instructors actually created some significant advantages for students. Students had a lot of positive things to say about the overall learning experience, the labs, the skills acquired, the online classroom interaction, the dynamism of the instructors, and the teaching assistants who help with labs and reference material.

The Top Four Elements That Help Students

1.  The experience is effective.  Students appreciated the downloadable course materials, lab materials, course books, archived video recordings, daily classroom sessions, and cloud-based labs. Just as importantly, they thrived in the interactive student-to-student and student-to-instructor chat rooms, which are new to the classroom experience.

Here’s what students had to say:

2.  Hands-On Interactive Labs and Ranges Help Students Develop Necessary Skills.  The labs build critical skills based on scenarios and challenges created by the course authors. These scenarios are based on their actual experiences as cybersecurity practitioners. During the pandemic, the labs were adapted to be used immediately by students on their jobs – in some cases, on the same day due to remote work environments. Students have access to 1,700 labs with more than 1,360 hours of interactive activities and cloud-based range environments. These hands-on activities allow students to analyze data from real compromises, reinforcing the skills they’ve been taught and will need at their jobs.

Here’s what students had to say:

3.  Instructors Bring Real-World Skills to the Classroom.  Students learn from industry leaders who are not only instructors but also practitioners working in the field, authoring books, and building tools. In their comments, students say they appreciate the fact that those instructors actively practice what they are teaching. Knowing that instructors are experts working on cybersecurity challenges worldwide gives them confidence that the skills they are learning are current best practices. We were also reminded that the exceptional quality of instructors matters – it has been the primary reason why students provide such positive reviews.

Here’s what students had to say:

4.  Classroom Interaction Engages Both the Remote Students and the Instructors.  Students want to feel connected to other students and instructors. They appreciate the interactivity that is key to effective learning and can ask each other questions and interact continuously during class. This has encouraged many students to engage in asking questions, making them better able to absorb the material and learn more in the process. As a result, student classroom interaction is often more effective. The instructor can give detailed responses to students and provide additional supporting resources (websites, code, etc.) in chat windows that allow for better sharing than physical rooms. Students are also less intimidated about participating, and we see a higher quality of engagement.

Here’s what students had to say:

In sum, students are telling us that they love the SANS Live Online experience, content, and instructors. One student summarizes the overall comments better than we can: