eduLAB

eduLAB is a virtual computer lab service for technical education: universities, vocational colleges and schools use it to give each student a lab environment in the cloud instead of a room of physical machines. The home page says it offers customized virtual labs "for technical education, including cybersecurity, networking, programming, and engineering courses", and describes it as "an education-centric, scalable solution with compliance functionality to monitor and support the progress of technical learning." The About page says the company was founded in 2018, and the site footer carries an Australian Business Number, ABN 79 629 762 689. The reader it serves is the IT faculty, registered training organization or school that has to deliver hands-on practical units and assess them, not a creator selling courses to the public.

Two kinds of lab

eduLAB offers two lab types. The Complex Lab Environment "brings together multiple virtual machines, creating a rich lab environment ideal for cybersecurity and networking courses." This is where a networking or security unit gets several connected machines per student, which is the setup a physical lab finds hardest to provide and reset. The Workstation puts "all the applications your students need" in one virtual desktop that students open from any of their own computing devices, and the home page says it is used for programming and engineering courses.

Both are reached through a web browser. The site's banner line is "Learning Anywhere, Anytime", and its audience blocks sum the three markets up: customized lab environments "to suit your curriculum perfectly" for higher education, lab environments "compliant with training package assessment conditions" for vocational colleges, and "Graphics-intensive applications through any computing device" for schools.

What teachers and assessors get

The home page groups the teaching side under an "Education-Centric User Interface": single sign-on access, browser access to labs, evidence capture for practical learning, the ability to monitor and support progress, tracking of the time students spend on each lab, an audit log, and "comprehensive reports". The pricing tables repeat the feature list for every compute tier as evidence gallery, lab progress, single sign-on and reports.

The evidence gallery matters most for vocational providers. A practical ICT unit has to be assessed against the conditions in its training package, and the company's blog has a webinar on delivering cybersecurity units for registered training organizations that covers which units of competency exist for cybersecurity learning, what the learning activities look like ("more like hacking and how to prevent from being hacked") and how to collect evidence for cybersecurity assessments. The About page states the mission as offering "education-centric virtual lab solutions" with "compliance functionality", so that students and educators can monitor and support progress.

Lab design

Lab design is part of the pricing model, and there are two ways to do it. Under Tailored Lab Design the institution shares its lab requirements and eduLAB's team designs a customized "Master Lab". Under Do It Yourself the institution gets access to the back end and builds its own labs. Once the master lab meets the brief, eduLAB deploys it to students on the scheduled date, "prior to each semester or daily for rolling intakes". Updates can be made by either side before a deployment. The Lab Design Services page also says that "Starting in 2024, lab deployments will be automated", letting institutions deploy labs when and to whom they want.

Separately, eduLAB sells Practical ICT Resources: the products page says it specializes in "designing resources for practical ICT units that interact in a virtual lab environment", so learners get hands-on work in the lab rather than slides and quizzes.

Pricing

The pricing page is unusually complete, and every price on it is quoted ex GST. Prices are per student, by tier, with a fixed lab validity period. The home page calls this "Cost Predictability": a "fixed price per tier model" so a provider can budget precisely.

For vocational programs, lab validity is 3 months from deployment to a user, and a student lab costs $28 on Tier A, $39 on Tier B, $49 on Tier C and $72 on Tier D. The page gives unit-of-competency examples for each: ICTWEB, ICTPRG, ICTSAS and ICTICT units on Tier A, ICTCYS and ICTNWK units on Tier B, ICTNWK and ICTSAS on Tier C, and ICTNWK virtual computing units on Tier D.

For higher education programs, lab validity is 4 months, and a student lab costs $37 on Tier A, $52 on Tier B, $67 on Tier C and $95 on Tier D. The examples here are programming and web development (A), data mining and cyber security (B), advanced networking (C) and enterprise virtualization platforms (D).

The compute resources are the same in both tables. Tier A runs up to two VMs with 4 GB memory, 4 vCPUs and 100 GB storage; Tier B up to five VMs, 8 GB, 10 vCPUs and 250 GB; Tier C up to eight VMs, 16 GB, 18 vCPUs and 400 GB; Tier D up to twelve VMs, 24 GB, 28 vCPUs and 800 GB with nested virtualization enabled. Trainer labs are free when labs are deployed to students for each quarter, and the first order has a 30-user minimum.

Graphics-intensive labs are priced in two steps and limited to one virtual machine each, with 4-month validity. Step 1 is a compute tier per named user: $37, $52 or $67 per student per trimester for Tiers A, B and C. Step 2 is a graphics accelerator per concurrent user (CCU) per trimester: $175 for Tier A (an NVIDIA M60/P40 card) or $285 for Tier B (an NVIDIA A10 card), each with 1GB of dedicated GPU memory. On top of that comes an NVIDIA vWS Education Subscription License at $131.75 per concurrent user per year, and the minimum purchase is 8 CCUs in increments of eight seats. The page's worked example is 32 students with 8 working at once on Tier B compute and a Tier A accelerator: $1,664 for compute, $1,400 for the accelerator and $1,054 for the license, $4,118 in total excluding GST.

Practical ICT Resources cost "from $3,500 to $5,500 per unit" depending on the unit's complexity, quoted on request, and the company offers a demonstration of them.

Track record and partners

The About page lists an MVP grant from the New South Wales Government and a "Highly Commended" award from the Consensus EdTech Award. It says eduLAB sponsors education conferences including ITECA (Independent Tertiary Education Council Australia), the National VET Conference, eduTECH, EDUCAUSE, the AHECS Cybersecurity Summit and Purple Team Australia, and that it is "a Showcase Partner of CAUDIT."

The home page points to two case studies. One describes how ATMC, "in partnership with renowned universities like Federation University and Western Sydney University", moved its IT programs onto eduLAB. The other covers Melbourne Polytechnic shifting from in-person classes to online learning during the pandemic, told through interviews with the people who led it in 2021.

Contact and trying it

The site gives one phone number, 1300 338 522, plus an email form, a demonstration request form and a "Try it now" form.

Who it suits

eduLAB suits an IT faculty or vocational provider that teaches practical units in cybersecurity, networking, programming, virtualization or engineering and wants every student in a separate lab without running the hardware. Vocational providers get the tightest fit: prices by tier mapped to units of competency, a 3-month validity that matches a term, and evidence capture for assessment. A university gets the same tiers with 4-month validity. A school or course using graphics software can budget the GPU option exactly from the worked example. It is not a general LMS: there is no course catalog, storefront or content builder, so it sits alongside whatever system already runs enrollment and courses. Small classes should note the 30-user first order and the 8-seat GPU minimum.