Digital Labs and Simulations

As the adoption of online education has grown in the U.S., reaching millions of high school and college students yearly, educators and textbook manufacturers have sought ways to move labs to the online environment. Digital labs and simulations have been developed in many scientific disciplines, from physics to biology, from chemistry to earth sciences, and are sometimes intended to replace labs and other times intended to supplement face-to-face instruction. Collections of these digital labs and simulations can be found at many sites. Various groups have published evidence that virtual labs and simulations can be effective tools for promoting student learning (e.g., Millis et al., 2011; Baker and Verran, 2004; Sommers and Sommers, 2003; Martinez-Jimenez et al., 2003). As a group of experienced lab instructors with expertise in various disciplines (astronomy, biology, chemistry, earth sciences, and physics), we sought to review digital labs and/or simulations to determine the best use of these tools in our teaching as well as to determine the characteristics that made a digital lab a useful teaching tool.