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Bina Rai博士是新加坡技术与设计大学（SUTD）的高级讲师。SUTD的课程为学生提供工程或建筑业的职业准备，这些学生倾向于吸引那些专注于设计思维的动力学学习者的学生。包括比娜（Bina）在内的教师，非常考虑如何为其独特学生建立引人入胜的课程。我们与她谈了她如何发现Labster以及她想解决的问题。
As it goes in design thinking, Bina started with her problem and she actually had 3 problems she wanted to address:
1。参与度低
Bina and her co-instructors typically teach 10 classes with 45-50 students in each class. At times she felt like “I’m actually fighting the distracted classroom”. Her classroom is filled with students with laptops who spend a portion of their class time online shopping, on Google or Facebook.
“I wanted to add something else to the course where they can start to be responsible for their own learning”
2。Student Ownership of Learning
“粉笔和谈话”是比娜教学的基石，她的学生经常回应比娜教导董事会上写着的所有内容的积极效果。但是，这并不总是最有效的教学方式，也不是让学生拥有学习的所有权。“我觉得我并没有真正为他们想要的终身学习习惯或技能做出贡献。我想在课程中添加其他东西，在那里他们可以开始对自己的学习负责。”
3.参与非裁判
Bina的课程由一年级学生组成，课程是强制性的。“他们不会成为生物学家或化学家，因此我们需要以不同的方式教每个主题。我需要找到一种策略来以他们作为动力学学习者欣赏的方式吸引他们。他们需要做事而不是记住概念。”
Discovering virtual simulations
After identifying the 3 problems she was trying to fix, she went to “search the internet like every good student does”. The internet responded with aTED talk by Michael Bodeaker, CTO and co-founder of Labster. The TED talk covers Michael’s vision for how we can revolutionize science education with virtual labs. For Bina, the talk set her on a path to try and solve her problems, “It was a very good talk and it got me thinking about how this can possibly work for me and would this solve my issues? He also recommended a research paper inNature Biotech.
Reading that paper, I was inspired, mainly because I liked the fact that it was an evidence-based research paper. The control and experimental groups were proper and well thought out and the evaluation method was great as well. I thought, ‘you know, maybe this will work for us.'”
Building a curriculum with virtual labs
比娜（Bina）申请了教育创新赠款，将实验室带入她的大学，并与同事Leo Chen Huei博士一起进行自己的研究。他们的赠款获得了批准，Bina建立了控制和实验组。在实验课程中，有15名学生将使用带有VR耳机的Labster，30名学生将使用模拟的桌面版本。每个班级都由pre-Quiz组成，然后是课程，然后对Labster进行介绍以及如何使用。学生完成模拟后，他们进行了一项后期和外部调查，所有这些都在其LMS系统内进行，以易于使用。
For Bina, she found her students very responsive to both the VR and desktop version of the simulations. As she noted, “The students found it easy, they belong to a certain profile that is very tech-savvy. In fact, I think they found it even easier than me to navigate! This generation really enjoys gaming and play and so the engagement was not an issue.”
Increase in learning outcomes
比娜（Bina）和她的同事目前正在努力发表有关他们研究结果的论文，她很友好，可以与我们分享她的研究结果。总体而言，与对照组的学生相比，桌面学生的测验得分增加了10％。虽然使用VR耳机的学生也看到对照组的增加并不那么重要。超出测验得分和知识保留实验室的提高，还解决了Bina想要解决的所有问题。
The course saw an increase in student engagement and motivation. In the post-simulation surveys, many students stated that they appreciated the storylines and realistic detailed laboratories. The survey results also showed “that the majority of students perceived that the simulations improved their learning of DNA-based technologies, students were motivated to complete the simulation and felt more confident at the end.” Bina also shared feedback from some of her students, “They like the fact that they can try all the processes and steps in an experiment, which is unlikely in a real lab. One student mentioned that they would never get this type of experience from reading a textbook.”
“What better way of introducing non-major students to a lab than virtual simulations.”
Finally, Labster was helping engage non-majors. One of the reasons Bina chose Labster was its ability to give non-majors exposure to something they never would have access to. Bina said, “What better way of introducing non-major students to a lab than virtual simulations. The fact that it is safe, controlled, is repeatable, and the students get immediate feedback is great.”
The future of science education
Bina’s research has helped using Labster at the University for the coming years. She’s also hoping to increase the access to Labster at the university as she sees it as a supplement to textbooks. “The students do not seem to be using the recommended textbooks. They’re not reading enough, even though we supply them with hard-copy books in the classroom. I think Labster simulations might be a better way of learning these concepts.”
