Behind the Scenes: Making Virtual Labs for Climate Change

Labster hosted a webinar “Global Issues Event Series: Climate in the Classroom”.

We pulled back the curtain to introduce some of the members of the development team that created Labster's climate change science simulations! Francisco Moreno, Elisha Teo, and Albin Olafsson describe their pedagogy, ideation, validation, and testing process.

Here are some fun highlights:

Q: Where does Labster get the ideas for its virtual lab simulations?

(2:10 - 3:32) Albin - I work specifically for high school, we’re looking at the NGSS standard. We’re really looking at what teachers need, what topics are they struggling to teach, and where the students really struggle. 

Q: How do you translate ideas into experiential learning activities?

(4:35 - 5:03) Elisha - The principle that lends most to an experiential learning experience is active learning where we aim for the students to be intrinsically motivated throughout the simulation and they have the agency to be in charge during the simulation. This agency is what we consider to be key for interactivity, not just clicking a bunch of buttons in order to get to the next stage of learning.

Q: How do you know if you've struck the right balance between freedom and structure?

(11:44 - 11:50) Francisco - We put a lot of emphasis on user-testing, we really try to test the simulations with actual uses, which are the students throughout the creation process.