Imagine if your students could have unlimited access to multi-million dollar world-class laboratory facilities anywhere in the world, anytime.
Simulations have long been known to improve learning, motivation and engagement while reducing costs in fields such as aviation. These benefits now extend to online laboratory simulations, with our next-generation virtual laboratories showing the same kinds of improvements (Nature Biotechnology, July 2014) when used along-side or in replace of traditional teaching methods.
While many distance education technologies focus on taking the physical university experience of lectures and textbooks and digitizing them, we show what technology can provide to complement or supplement the physical experience – incorporating 3D-molecular animations, self-paced enquiry-based lab courses, immediate access to fully simulated versions of the latest lab equipment, real-world scenarios, story-telling, and immersive virtual environments. Our virtual labs are now being used by universities world-wide, including at MIT, Harvard, University of New England, ETH Zurich, Imperial College London, and many more, continually creating an improved student learning experience.
We’ve created a rich virtual laboratory learning experience with the aim of empowering the next generation of scientists around the world.
The outcomes/take aways for the audience (preferably administrators at Universities and Colleges) will be to learn about cutting edge educational technologies that will enhance STEM students’ learning outcome (see Nature Biotechnology, 2014). Furthermore, they will learn how the Virtual Laboratories and Virtual Reality which we are currently conducting research in the use of, will help retain and engage STEM students.