Careers are constantly on the minds of educators and students because preparation for the real world is crucial to effective classroom learning. The World Economic Forum came out with three critical skills students will need to have central in class to prepare them for jobs of the future.
The three skills are:
We asked our Global Curriculum Lead, SJ Boulton, how Labster supports and encourages these three skills through our virtual lab simulations. Read on to find out more!
Problem-solving is the ability to solve a problem with ease. Our simulations are set up as storylines where students get to follow a story and make choices throughout. In many of our simulations, students will encounter problems they’ve never faced before and have to determine a course of action. For example:
“We have a Solution Preparation simulation where students learn how to make the solution. They can just kind of have at it. If they get too mixed up and everything's not working, they can just press the big red button and reset it so they can try again. I think that's a really good example of problem-solving.” - SJ Boulton
SJ outlined two aspects of adaptability. The first is being able to negotiate environments in the story-based simulations that perhaps they've never encountered before and the second being preparation for a digital workforce.
“Labster better prepares students to engage or adapt to change in workplaces as digital technology advances. The integration of Labster prepares students for a digital workforce.” - SJ Boulton
While students often do simulations independently, there are ways to make the experience collaborative. SJ recommends encouraging collaboration this way:
“Educators can choose to have students complete simulations in pairs. They then have students discuss the choices they’ve made about why they've taken the action that they have within the simulation. And then they can defend it afterward through discussion with the whole class.”- SJ Boulton
Virtual Labs are interactive science simulations that accelerate STEM learning through gamification. Educators assign labs to students through their internet browsers, where students can train lab skills, visualize abstract theory, and learn science through real-world scenarios.
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