Make IT Work for You
I’ve seen the same principle borne
out in my employment with TestOut.
We help instructors, students, and
professionals work smart through our
innovative approach to learning. Us-
ing our LabSim online education plat-
form, learners can watch professional
demonstrations, read text lessons, and
work through real-world scenarios in
a simulated environment.
Schools that use LabSim don’t have
to purchase thousands of dollars’
worth of computer hardware, but
students can work through the same
problems they would encounter with
hands-on devices. If schools do have
practice labs, then students move up
to physical equipment after getting the
hang of things online. The physical
equipment takes less of a beating from
inexperienced users, and instructors
spend less time grading and resetting
labs.Use systems to increase effectivenessMy job is part sales and part mar-
keting. In order to be effective in sales
and marketing, you have to continu-
ally be in front of prospects, either via
phone, e-mail, face-to-face visits, or
other means of communication. Tra-
ditionally, a person in this kind of role
would have to keep organized using a
calendar, task reminders, and so forth.
By setting tasks, you don’t have to
remember who you are supposed to
contact and when.
Yet even with the traditional task
method, there is still a lot of work
involved in writing individual e-mails
and performing different outreach
activities. I recently started using
sales and marketing automation
software that dramatically increased
my effectiveness. Instead of having to
write e-mails one at a time, I can set
up a series of e-mails that will be sent
according to a specified schedule, thus
freeing up my time to pursue more
sales opportunities.TestOut does many similar things
to help instructors and students
increase effectiveness. All courses inte-
grate seamlessly with learning man-
agement system (LMS) platforms such
as Canvas or Blackboard. We have
created apps for certain platforms that
allow instructors to point and click the
links they want, instead of having to
spend hours and hours creating LTI
links.
On top of auto-grading students’
work, we also facilitate grade pass-
back, which saves time having to ex-
port and import grades. The best part
is that, because of the way our LabSim
platform is structured, we have elimi-
nated the need for deep linking found
in other platforms. We also have an
implementation team that will create
classes for instructors at no additional
cost.Get to workAt one point in the “fumbling
around” phase of my career, I decided
to start my own business. I under-
stood my product and how to sell it,
but I hadn’t figured out how to work
smart or to incorporate systems into
my work. I knew there had to be a
better way of marketing and spent a
lot of time trying to figure out what it
was. Too much time, ultimately.I read a ton of
books and seemed to
see the same three
themes repeating
themselves over and
over again: work
smart, use systems to
increase effectiveness,
and get to work.