At the elementary school and middle school level, it appears that the most common forms of online laboratories are simulations and at-home labs, as described in earlier blog posts. As I have been searching through various web sites, I have found several applications of virtual laboratories and simulations at the advanced high school level and college level. Here are some examples.
Brigham Young University offers a distance-education degree program that features a simulated chemistry lab known as the Virtual ChemLab, which allows students to conduct chemistry experiments from the safety of their homes, submitting lab reports online. Some college officials feel that the online labs are advanced enough to earn the student college credit. These courses may be suitable for non-science majors, and for science majors to practice on equipment that their university may not have. You can read more about other virtual labs being developed at other universities such as the University of Colorado at Denver, UNC at Greensboro, and University of Texas Medical Branch in the 1/31/03 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education Information Technology at http://chronicle.com/free/v49/i21/21a03001.htm.
Virtual laboratories to teach science and engineering principles have been developed for use at Northwestern University and Oxford University. The courses are designed to allow students to focus on fundamentals of basic science and engineering, allowing students to design, analyze, and test artifacts in a simulated environment. See the project summary at http://www.qrg.northwestern.edu/projects/NSF/avl.htm.
Johns Hopkins University offers an introduction to engineering course that uses an interactive virtual laboratory setting. Some of the experiments offered are in logic circuits, diffusion processes, robotic arm control, bridge design, sound propagation and heat conduction. Please read about the experiments at http://www.jhu.edu/virtlab/virtlab.html.
The University of Virginia hosts the UVa Virtual Lab, which was discussed in an earlier blog (see Virtual Science Labs, March 21, 2008). Once you enter the virtual lab, you choose from a floor plan which individual lab you want to enter. I visited the E & M (electricity and magnetism) lab. Here you can investigate such devices as a Van de Graaf generator (and listen to a podcast), a pith ball ping pong, and learn about other topics related to electricity and magnetism. While these programs are interactive, I would not classify them as actual labs, but rather as demonstrations. You can find the link to the UVa Virtual Lab at http://virlab.virginia.edu/VL/home.htm.
The University of Utah Genetic Science Learning Center offers three excellent interactive biotechniques labs, were the user can learn and practice basic techniques for use by molecular biologists. The labs are DNA extraction, gel electrophoresis, and DNA microarray. The gel electrophoresis technique is used in the high school AP Biology course. This is the best online lab/simulation I have found so far in my research. You can try these out yourself by visiting the link at: http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/units/biotech/index.cfm
Finally, Ohio University hosts the Interactive Science Lab, a virtual lab for middle school students. This lab allows middle school students conduct science experiments online. The experiments include a game with a scoring system to make the students entertained. The two experiments included are the sugar water solubility experiment and the Redi experiment (which disproved the theory of spontaneous generation). Try the labs at http://steam.cs.ohio.edu/interactivescience.html.
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2 comments:
Students where I teach have actually completed high school courses through BYU. They are actually slightly less expensive than the online courses through our county. My concern is whether the concepts taught line up as closely with the counties concepts.
I had one particular student who was advised to take a class from BYU. After looking through some of the topics, it was not at all what would align with the skills required from our county for that course.
I enjoyed trying some of the labs linked through John Hopkins. I can see an advantage to some engineering based labs that otherwise may require very large and expensive equipment. I am looking at working with our engineering department next year and would like to use a couple virtaul lab type experiments with the students. Your links are great!
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