Written by Victoria Guzzo • August 6, 2024 • 2 min read
Table of contents
Amy’s Online Lab Experience
Amy recently completed an online Anatomy & Physiology lab course at American National University. As a full-time student juggling working in a doctor’s office and taking care of five children, Amy had never taken online courses prior to enrolling in American National, but with scheduling conflicts and other responsibilities, taking her lab courses online just made sense for her.
Once Amy registered for this online course, she was relieved to learn that it included hands-on labs. Amy is a hands-on learner and needs to learn by ‘doing’ in order to retain and understand information.
| ????Light Bulb Moment???? The hands-on aspect of this lab was key for Amy, who was able to make it a learning experience for her whole family. “My 2-, 5-, and 10-year old were enthralled with the labs, particularly the dissection labs. They watched over my shoulder meticulously, as I cut the pig heart. I moved through each lab, showing them the tools and narrating each step, which also helped me. We loved examining the skeleton together, and using the virtual scope was convenient. I felt like I got the same experience as using a real microscope without having to have all the slides and specimens everywhere. From the blood typing to the ice water experiments, the hands-on component helped me understand the concepts much better, and it was fun to involve my kids in this learning experience.” |
Prior to this course, Amy had used Science Interactive in other Anatomy & Physiology courses as well as the pathology course Diseases of the Human Body.
“I take these online even though the workload can be heavier than attending on-campus. I’m able to go at my own pace, and I take full advantage of the auto-save in Science Interactive’s lab platform. If I need to step away after getting through exploration, it’s a comfort knowing that I can jump right back in where I left off.”
Amy appreciated the flexibility to go at her own pace and still have the resources and instruction needed to be successful. “By the end, I felt like I could apply the concepts we were learning and the activities we were doing to the real world. If you want to be a lab tech, you need to be able to look at samples under the microscope. You need to know what you’re looking at and how to identify things.”
| My Most Memorable Lab: Blood “The blood lab was fun because I was able to involve my kids in it, and they thought it was so cool. They actually fought over who would get their finger pricked for the sample. They were all curious about blood types after that.” During this lab, students create a blood smear on a blank slide using Wright’s stain and Wright’s buffer in order to identify erythrocytes, leukocytes, and platelets in the blood tissue. Students perform a blood typing test and explain its significance. |
Drawing Conclusions
Like any good experiment, you work your way through the scientific method to analyze the results, reflect on your findings, and draw your conclusions so you can move forward with new knowledge and ideas.
So now that you’re at the end of your online lab course, tell us: what did you learn and what advice might you give after your experience?
Make sure you have plenty of time. When it comes to the hands-on experiments, it doesn’t take that long to do, but be sure to set aside enough time (at least 2-3 hours) because there’s a lot of information to absorb.
