OSZ-Verkehr improves learning experience thanks to NetOp School

OSZ-Verkehr is a vocational school for over 3000 students in Berlin (Germany). It offers educational services involving computer courses lasting between two and 10 hours a week. The school’s 100 MBit network connects 270 PCs and 6 servers located in 13 computer labs and various smaller training-rooms.

All courses at OSZ-Verkehr involve practical “hands-on” exercises where teachers demonstrate a wide range of material using everything from Excel spreadsheets to Delphi programming models and Word documents. Until 2002, dedicated LCD projectors of various ages and functionalities were used for teaching. However, theft, hardware damage and the need to keep the rooms in semi-darkness, made training under such circumstances no longer acceptable.

It was soon clear that the situation could be drastically improved by introducing computer-based training software. Peter Koch, the system-administrator of OSZ-Verkehr, decided to evaluate three products (MasterEye, VNC and NetOp School) for this purpose.

The PC hardware at OSZ-Verkehr ranged from machines with Pentium I to Pentium III/800 MHz processors, plus a wide range of diverse network- and graphics card. This meant the ability of the training software to function quickly and reliably under such varying conditions would be a critical factor. NetOp School emerged as the best, most stable and fastest solution.

Following a successful evaluation period, the first 105 licenses were rolled out at the end of 2002. Today, nearly 200 PCs at OSZ-Verkehr run NetOp School.

“Installing the NetOp School modules is very easy and fast,” explains Peter Koch. “Even with 17 slow machines and 1 teacher PC, the classroom is up and running in around 15 minutes. And the technical complexity is invisible. Even users who are unfamiliar with networking technology can easily set up everything.”

Peter Koch also reports that after 6 months of heavy usage in the classrooms, NetOp School has proven itself to be an extremely stable application, with no PC lockup in that period despite the very diverse hardware.

Of course, money is always an issue in teaching environments: “If we had decided to purchase new LCD projectors, it would have cost us around 1,800 EUR for a single classroom, plus all the disadvantages of using hardware. NetOp School costs only a third of that amount, and we don’t have to darken the room to be sure students can see what’s on their screens. We can also stop them from surfing or chatting when they should be paying attention to their teacher.”

“Another essential factor for the staff is that they can start working with NetOp School almost immediately, typically without even reading the documentation provided,” adds Peter Koch. “And whenever there is a technical question, the NetOp support-team reacts quickly and on time.”

A typical training lesson at OSZ-Verkehr
Monday morning at 8 o’clock, the teachers turn on the power and the students log onto their PCs. The NetOp School student module automatically starts as Windows boots up, and cannot be closed even with the task-manager. As teachers power on their PCs, the NetOp School Teacher modules also load automatically, each with its own individual profile.

As soon as all students are displayed in the “Thumbnail view”, the teachers take over. Entering the “Demo mode” they immediately have the attention of the whole class. Not being able to use their PCs for anything else, the students are free to follow the demonstration on-screen without being distracted.

When the teachers are ready, they release the demo-mode and the students can start working on their own. During this phase, teachers can use the “Monitoring” function to see what each student is doing. They can help students using the chat-option, or remote-control an individual PC to assist or close down unwanted applications. Individual results are presented to the class using NetOp’s advanced “breakout session” feature.

If teachers give students tests, they can use the “Attention” function to freeze all actions and thereby ensure no student has an unfair advantage over the others.

At the end of the lesson, the teacher uses NetOp School’s remote shutdown feature to power off all the PCs.

For more information about OSZ-Verkehr, please visit: www.osz-verkehr.de