We’ve worked with instructors teaching at serious scale: think courses with around 4,000 students per year! With classes this size, it becomes increasingly difficult to give every student a meaningful lab experience, week after week. That’s where virtual labs can help.

We offer an “infinite” virtual biology course to help with problems like these, but what does that really mean?

Over 1,200 biology students at the University of Central Florida completed a survey about their experience using UniVirtual as part of their introductory biology course in Fall 2025. The results provide insight into how students access the UniVirtual platform on their own devices or school computers, navigate the world, and engage with the learning environments and pedagogical approachs employed within them.

Do students need VR headsets to engage meaningfully with immersive learning? 

Here at UniVirtual, we’ve asked ourselves this question more than once. We’ve tested it too, in real classrooms. In this blog, we go on a deep dive into what actually changes between these interfaces and what really drives impact when it comes to the virtual classroom environment.  

Cellular respiration is one of the most essential biological processes, yet many students struggle to visualize how it works at the molecular level. To help bridge this gap, UniVirtual’s biology course contains high-quality, real-time, 3D animations that bring the whole process to life. These animations not only illustrate each step of the cellular respiration, but they also prepare students for the activities and challenges that follow within our virtual learning platform.

Join us as we delve into the remarkable journey of Jasmine Kaur, a second-year Health Sciences major at UCF, as she shares her transition from a virtual student in UniVirtual's biology labs to a Teaching Assistant (TA) within those same learning environments.

Simulation-based training is applied across many fields today, preparing learners for the real thing. Pilots learn the ropes in flight simulators. Healthcare workers practice with virtual patients. And now, students practice with virtual microscopes to be better prepared for the classroom.

Why we believe instructors are a vital component in the virtual classroom. Through an introduction of the tools available in virtual spaces and sharing the experiences of an instructor who regularly teaches in them, we see how an instructor’s presence is essential to enhancing student experience.

From lifelike simulations to abstract worlds, virtual spaces help us visualize and interact with things we might never be able to otherwise. How do we make virtual learning effective yet still fun? We summarize our main aspirations when converting traditional learning materials into virtual games and activities.