"If you’re curious about what a virtual lab simulation is and how to make it accessible to all students, start with this episode. SJ breaks down Labster’s journey toward inclusive design and shares what you can expect from Labster’s accessibility features and diverse character catalog. Need ideas for how to embed virtual labs within your curriculum? SJ offers some best practices starting with checking for access needs and surrounding the lab with supportive activities. "
Memorable moments:
[00:03:27] SJ: What we aim to do is break down the barriers that stop the user from, stop a student or an educator from really engaging with the learning opportunities that are contained within.
[00:05:38] SJ: What you might not know is that everything that they pick up on in terms of issues for access or cultural bias or suggestions for how we might improve the diversity of representation within our simulations comes to the content team. And we listen and we try and formulate responses that are useful that we can actually implement within our current platform.
[00:08:00] SJ: We have a feature now where the skin tone of the avatar representing the user is randomly generated and there are five different skin tones to represent the different users of the simulations that can randomly be generated in the simulation.
[00:15:47] SJ: We've got our simple activities, our simple pre-lab activities, if you want, and fact-finding, reading perhaps in a blog or finding information online, then we have a virtual lab experience and then maybe we have a more constructive activity, something that's more consolidated after the lab or something like that might be designed in a protocol based on a technique that's taught in the lab.
[00:20:18] SJ: If you want to use the virtual labs to really deliver a portion of your syllabus or to really highlight a particular topic or technique within your syllabus for a course, then it would be better to either dedicate a time slot in the timetable for completion of the virtual lab or giving a very clear deadline of when the lab needs to be done.
Episode 1 Transcript: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1T9ROE8hEcm5zN-GtplF1oSKCO2zbU7ds?usp=sharing
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