Back to School: Start Here in Fall 2021

Another school year is upon us, bringing a fresh start for your students and a new opportunity for you to make an impact on them. This time of year is always full of excitement and hope, but pandemic-related uncertainty still lingers. You’ve had to overcome so many obstacles to educating your learners these past 18 months, and, unfortunately, more hurdles may be on the horizon. But, no matter what happens, Labster is here to support you and your students — whether you’re teaching courses face-to-face, remote, or hybrid.

Here’s what we’re doing to make sure you have every resource you need to be successful:

2021 Fall survey results: you told us and we listened

We couldn’t build Labster without you. Your input helps us make each iteration of the platform better for you and your learners. So, to make sure we keep our fingers on the pulse of our community, we recently polled 195 high school, college, and university science educators on how they’re feeling about the new school year.

Here’s a peek at what we learned:

• While most K-12 students will be back in the physical classroom (82%), 40% of college students and 25% of university students will do hybrid or remote learning.

• 33% of all educators are most concerned about health and safety, while 32% of educators are most worried about redeveloping their curriculum for in-person or hybrid learning.

• Every educator polled said they would spend additional funding received on digital learning tools or software.
• Though many learners will be back in the classroom, nearly 57% of K-12 teachers will continue to use virtual labs (compared to 41% of college professors and 15% of university professors).
• Nearly half of those surveyed indicated that making edtech accessible was extremely important to them. 

• K-12 educators use virtual labs to engage and motivate their students, help learners visualize science, and add variety to their curriculum.
• College professors use virtual labs to replace in-person labs, help students learn by doing, and visualize science.
• University lecturers use virtual labs to supplement wet labs, help students learn by doing, and visualize science.

What do you think of these results? Do you feel the same way? Let us know!

We’re giving you the science education tools and support you asked for

We respect and value your opinion, and we want you to feel heard. Based on what you’ve told us, we’ve been working hard to give you and your students the best learning experience possible. Recently, we’ve:

• Increased the size of our Customer Support Team threefold to serve you better. Live chat is available seven days a week.
• Made our virtual labs more accessible for students with special needs.
• Translated more of our simulations into different languages.
• Added new simulations and educational content.

Plus, we just launched a brand new, user-friendly Help Center designed to answer your questions (and your students’) quickly and easily. You can now browse our knowledge base by role (student, instructor, LMS administrator) or use the improved search feature that suggests relevant articles based on the keywords you enter.

Want to learn more about how Labster supports you and your students? Check out this short video.

Our back to school gift to you

Educating the next generation of scientists is a challenge even in the best of times. But, when you layer on prolonged difficult circumstances, it can take a lot of extra effort to reach your learners. We know you and your students will rise to the occasion despite these hardships, and we’ll be there for you every step of the way.

Our back to school gift to you is this opportunity to try simulations in biology, chemistry and physics. We’re giving you free, open access to three of our best teaching tools until September 30th. Next steps:

– Get access to simulations

– Try simulations yourself

– Assign simulations to your students

– Observe the results