5 Reasons Why You Should Run Virtual Labs with Visible Body

Life science labs typically demand many resources, which can cause more stress and stretch your budget. With Visible Body, your students can learn in 3D without the time, effort, and energy it takes to run a lab! 

With over 6,000 3D structures, Visible Body Suite is designed for student learning and discovery. Visible Body Courseware leverages the power of those 3D models, providing a teaching and learning platform that can be used standalone or integrated into your institution’s LMS. VB Suite and Courseware are a tag team that enable instructors to engage their students with 3D learning. 

Let’s look at five reasons why you should run virtual labs with Visible Body!

1. No wrong cuts

In VB Suite, use the Dissect tool to remove entire structures. Dissected away the wrong structure? No worries! With the click of a button, you can replace it. 

Instructors can simulate a cadaver lab using Gross Anatomy Lab Views. With the Gross Anatomy Lab (GAL) feature, you can toggle between male and female models and supine or prone positions.

Dissecting in a GAL view in VB Suite.

In the biology classroom, students can virtually dissect vertebrates (frog and pig) and invertebrates (sea star and earthworm); monocot and dicot roots, stems, and leaves; and bacterial, animal, and plant cells.

Dissecting the frog model in VB Suite.

With VB Suite, your students can zoom in to dissect structures that are physically impossible to dissect in real life. For example, you can dissect a beating heart as you observe a simulated ECG, and you can peel away the rough endoplasmic reticulum to reveal the nucleus of a plant cell.

2. Use the resources you already have

You don’t need to buy anything new to use Visible Body in the lab—no equipment, no scalpels, and no fancy new electronics. You and your students can access Visible Body products through the web, iOS, and Android. Visible Body can also be accessed on Chromebooks and on computers with older operating systems. 

Students using Courseware have access to the VB Suite mobile app, and all models and saved custom content are available on the mobile app, even without wifi or cell reception!  The mobile app also enables students to use augmented reality (AR) to interact with the models in a whole new way.

Using AR mode through the VB Suite mobile app. 

Does your institution have an interactive table, like a ClearTouch panel or Anatomage table? You can use VB Suite on the web browser. This can be a great way to incorporate teamwork, with multiple students using the table to work through quizzes.
 

3. More information at your fingertips

Because VB Suite is a reference guide, your students don’t need to keep referring back to their textbooks. When you click or tap on a structure, the info box will appear in the top right corner, giving you textbook-level information about the structure and the options to add a tag, fade, or hide the structure. 

Let’s say that I’m learning about back muscles through the back muscular system GAL View. I’ll select the trapezius, and I’ll tap on the Details button in the info box. This allows me to see the muscle’s origins and insertions, blood supply, and innervation. Once I’m done exploring, I can return to the GAL View with a single tap.

GIF from VB Suite.

I can also explore Related Content through the info box—for example, if I select the trapezius and look at Related Content, I can instantly access interactive muscle action animations that show the trapezius in motion!

GIF from VB Suite.

4. Visible Body’s got your back with premade curriculum content

Here at Visible Body, we want to make it easier for instructors to get their students engaged and excited about learning. That’s why we offer an extensive library of premade courses, immersive assignments, Flashcards, Tours, and more. All that content is easily edited and customized for your class's specific needs. With Courseware, you get the best of both worlds: great premade content, plus the ability to edit it as you see fit.

Nervous system assignment in Courseware. 

With Courseware, you have access to premade…

• Lab manuals, including AR labs
• Courses that correlate to popular textbooks and course titles
• Virtual labs and assignments that create an “on the rails,” distraction-free online environment, guiding students through 3D models, animations, simulations, quizzes, and more
• Flashcard Decks perfect for studying on the go with the VB Suite mobile app
• Tours that walk students through systems and concepts

5. No prep, no cleanup, just learning

Labs are a fantastic way for students to learn hands-on, as they see what they’ve learned in lecture or in their textbooks put into practice. Dissection labs give students the opportunity to explore spatial relationships between structures and get a better understanding of physiology. 

However, labs mean a lot of extra work for the instructor. By running labs with Visible Body, you can save yourself so much time on setting up the labs and cleaning up afterward. With virtual labs, your students can manipulate the models, honing their visuospatial skills and reinforcing their knowledge, and you won’t need to wipe anything down afterward. 

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