What Does an Infinite Virtual Biology Lab Look Like?
Biology is one of the most hands-on subjects students study and one of the hardest to deliver at scale. When you’re teaching a large intake, labs can become a bottleneck very quickly. Bench space might run out. Equipment may need to be shared, meaning students might not get an equal chance to familiarize themselves with it. Time is limited. Even when the teaching is excellent, the practical experience can end up feeling rationed or uneven.
We’ve worked with instructors teaching at serious scale: think courses with 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?
What does “infinite” mean in a virtual classroom?
When we describe our virtual environments as “infinite” or “limitless” in scale, we don’t mean vague, buzzwordy potential. Virtual labs change what is possible in teaching, and this blog explains how.
In a virtual environment:
Any number of students can enter at the same time
Equipment does not run out
Lab benches are always available
Experiments don’t need cleanup or resets (plus, no breakages!)
Students can repeat an activity as many times as they need to fully learn it
For networked labs like ours, students can still work alongside their peers and ask their instructors for help in real time too. This significantly changes who gets access to hands-on learning and, ultimately, how engaging students find the experience.
Let’s look at this in more detail…
No cap on student numbers
Instead of forcing everyone into a single virtual space, we create as many “instances” of it as needed. A class of any size can enter the same experience at the same time, grouped in ways that make sense for collaboration, or each in their own fully functional version of it.
In practice, this means the size of a class doesn’t put pressure on the experience itself. The same class can run in parallel across many instances, with each student or group able to move through it at their own pace or within set class times.
For instructors, this removes the need to split sessions, rotate groups, or simplify activities just to make them manageable.
Infinite access to equipment
In many introductory labs, students share equipment out of necessity. That can mean students take turns, observe instead of participate, or feel rushed because a bench needs to be cleared for the next group.
In our virtual labs, equipment and resources are always available, which means the practical parts of a course can be designed around learning rather than logistics. Students can work when they are ready and take all the time they need without holding up their classmates. This is especially powerful in environments like our microscope lab, where access and time are a big part of building confidence and intrigue.
Infinite chances to try again
It bears repeating(!) that repeatability is one of the most underrated parts of learning. In a physical lab, repeating an experiment can be expensive, time-consuming, or simply impossible due to scheduling.
In a virtual lab, students can go back and do the activity again as many times as they need, even outside scheduled class times. That creates a different kind of learning behavior, and instructors notice it.
“[My students] spend a lot of time [in UniVirtual], and they want to come back and do the labs over and over again.”
Infinite support
Scalability is not only about how many students can enter an environment. It is also about how well students can navigate once they’re there.
Our virtual labs link a digital workbook to what students are doing and seeing. They can access instructions and supporting materials while they work through their labs, helping them stay on track with what they’re learning. If they get stuck, a TA is there virtually to help them.
Virtual environments can also change how comfortable students feel asking for help. One of our instructors described their virtual lab experience as a “judgement-free zone”. Asking virtually—and privately via text or voice chat—lessens learning anxiety, which is important in large courses where the students who need help the most are often the least likely to ask for it.
When it comes to technical help, our support team is always there in the environment during class times to assist students who might need help navigating. However, this is rare—in our most recent student survey of 1,200+ students, 91% said they found it easy to navigate in UniVirtual.
See for yourself
If you’re curious what an “infinite” virtual biology lab looks like in practice, you can now download our biology demo and explore the student experience today! It’s entirely free, with no time limits or paywalls, and is entirely self-guided, so you’re free to explore it at your own pace.