Why Do Librarians Love Visible Body Suite?

Libraries connect students to the resources and tools they need to succeed in the classroom and beyond—resources like Visible Body Suite. 

Over a thousand academic institutions currently subscribe to Visible Body! We often talk to students, instructors, and librarians about why they chose Visible Body and why they continue to use our products. Here are their top reasons for choosing us over other products like BioDigital, Complete Anatomy, and Gale.

1. VB Suite helps students succeed in a range of life science courses

The content in VB Suite is built to fit a variety of different courses.  All of Visible Body’s 3D models, animations, simulations, and free educational resources are developed by our in-house team of subject matter professionals and biomedical visualization modelers. To ensure accuracy and course relevance, we also work with an external review team of instructors and professors.

GIF of VB Suite. 

VB Suite’s most popular use is for the anatomy and physiology courses that are a prerequisite for many health sciences programs, as well as the general biology courses taken by so many students. However, students who take more life science courses will continue to find content in VB Suite that supports their academic success! 

You can browse overviews of some of the content we offer by course and degree pursuits: 

• Gross anatomy lab
• Kinesiology and sports medicine 
• General biology 
• Pathophysiology 
• Anatomy & Physiology 
• Dental and dental hygienist programs
  
  

2. VB Suite’s UI makes it easy for students to engage and learn more 

Here at Visible Body, we’ve spent a decade streamlining the user experience. When we designed VB Suite, we organized it to align with how users actually learn. 

It’s easy to access the web dashboard and start using VB Suite without installing any software on a computer. It’s also easy to download the VB Suite mobile app to an iOS or Android device!

From the home screen, students and instructors can browse by topic areas, type of content, or they can search for what they want. 

VB Suite encourages curiosity and exploration! When studying a 3D model,  an info box appears when you select a structure, giving the user: 

• An in-depth definition, with the option to be read aloud
• Pathologies relevant to that structure
• Related views
• If applicable, options to see bony landmarks, muscle attachments, muscle actions, blood supply, and innervation

GIF from VB Suite. 

VB Suite is available in seven languages. You don’t need to restart the app to change languages—from the settings menu, users can switch among English, Simplified Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish.

Subscribers access our web- and mobile-based visual learning content over 50,000 times a day—content that includes 3D models, bite-sized animations, Flashcard Decks, and visual Tours aligned with popular curricula.

3. VB Suite includes a library of premade learning content for instructors and students 

VB Suite’s study tools, premade study content, and customization options make it easy to learn, review, and retain information. Both students and instructors get a ton of use out of VB Suite’s premade Tours, Flashcard Decks, and dissection quizzes.

Tours are collections of saved, customized views—basically, an interactive 3D presentation. Many instructors use Tours as lecture aids, and students can create or view Tours as a method of reviewing information. Our team has created free, premade Tours that users can add to their account, covering everything from mitosis to the nervous system.

Flashcards are a very popular study tool—students also love our library of premade Flashcard Decks! Just like with Tours, students can also create or customize their own Flashcards.

Tours and Flashcard Decks are easily shareable, which makes it easy for students to study and collaborate.

You can check out all of Visible Body’s free, premade learning resources here!

4. Flexible access options

With VB Suite, students can learn when, where, and how they want. 

On desktop, VB Suite is accessible directly through the computer’s web browser—there’s never anything to download or update. This means that Visible Body can be accessed on Chromebooks and on computers with older operating systems. 

VB Suite is also available on mobile! All VB Suite users can download and use the iOS or Android app for free; they simply log in with their VB Suite credentials. On the mobile app, students can access their custom library of Tours, views, and Flashcards, test their knowledge with quizzes, and visualize anatomy and biology, even without Wi-Fi or cell reception. 

Augmented reality (AR) is an exciting feature unique to the mobile app. Using a mobile device’s camera, students can explore models in a new way. Instructors can use this feature with premade AR labs we’ve created in multiple languages.

Through Visible Body Courseware, students can also access VB Suite through their institution’s LMS. Learn more about Courseware here.

5. VB Suite can save students money

When libraries purchase VB Suite, they provide students with interactive tools they need to excel... and they can even end up saving students money. Let’s use University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Science & Engineering Library as an example. 

Ellen Lutz, Health Science Librarian and Liaison to the School of Nursing and the School of Public Health and Health Sciences, worked with Visible Body to set up a site license trial. After a semester of teaching with Visible Body, the faculty decided that Visible Body could—and would—replace their traditional lab manual.

Because the library purchased the site license, students no longer need to pay for a lab manual. 

"The lab manual that the students usually purchased is $80, and they have around 600 students that come through the A&P class each year, so the math means [students were paying] $48,000—and I can tell you that we do not pay anywhere near $48,000 a year for our site license. As a librarian, that was really what attracted me to it. Our libraries, and our campus in general, are really aware of the rising costs of textbooks and materials that students have to buy. Finding ways that libraries can help support and reduce that burden on students is an important piece of our mission," Ellen said.

6. Students can use what the pros use

VB Suite is the top choice for doctors, nurses, physical therapists, and other health professionals who want a 3D tool to communicate with clients and to use as reference. Annotation features, animated muscle actions, and 3D models of pathologies like Alzheimer’s disease and polycystic ovary syndrome make it easy to explain complicated health problems to patients and their families. 

Thanks to its utility, VB Suite and Visible Body Courseware have been adopted by over 1,000 universities and K12 schools in addition to practitioners across the globe!

Get a free trial for your library!

You can get a free trial of VB Suite for your library—just fill out a trial request form and a member of our team will get in contact with you.

Be sure to subscribe to the Visible Body Blog for more anatomy awesomeness! 

Are you an instructor? We have award-winning 3D products and resources for your anatomy and physiology course! Learn more here.