Online Lab Curriculum

Anatomy & Physiology Kits

A&P is one of the more difficult disciplines to replicate outside of a lab facility. After all, how can you replicate the complexity of in-person dissections or practice microscopy and histology outside of a traditional lab facility?

At Science Interactive, we provide instructors with several options for solving these unique challenges. Take the issue of dissections: we offer full specimens of formalin-free fetal pigs and an array of organ dissections such as sheep brain and cow eye, all of which provide your students with the opportunity to safely practice a complex dissection procedure from their home.

If that doesn’t seem right for your students, we also offer a virtual option. But don’t worry—this isn’t some basic point-and-click dissection program. We’ve partnered with BioDigital, whose 3D human visualization platform has been likened to Google Earth for the human body. Featuring more than 8,000 individually selectable anatomical structures, the BioDigital Human Platform contains fully segmented, labeled, and dissectible systems, easily configurable to meet any educational need.

As for microscopes, we can actually include compact compound-light microscopes in your students’ kits. Or, you can opt to utilize the Science Interactive Virtual Microscope (V-Scope). This advanced virtual microscope program simulates the use of a compound light microscope and includes a library of more than 80 interactive slides—ranging from bacteria to fruit flies to skeletal muscle—all using advanced technology and images from real slides. The V-Scope replicates everything that a student would do on a physical microscope, including raising and lowering the platform, turning on the light, placing and focusing slides, and more.

Our hands-on A&P lessons will guide your students as they model physiological processes and observe their own bodies. Whether they’re studying the skeletal system using our fully articulated skeleton model, investigating the role of enzymes in digestion, or determining their blood type, your students will discover the complexities of the body’s systems without needing to travel to campus. This is the next generation of modern learning.

Biology Kits

The primary concerns we hear from biology instructors center on the translation of complex dissections and advanced microscopy into the at-home environment. In addition to the tactile materials and virtual options available to professors, our biology kits include a diverse array of specimens to help your students dive into the science of life.

We offer comprehensive dissection procedures with a variety of vertebrate and invertebrate specimens, such as crayfish, grasshoppers, earthworms, hydra, frogs, and jellyfish. Instructors can also customize their student microscopy experience with prepared slides of plant and animal tissues, wet mount activities, and microbial observation.

As for microscopes, we can actually include compact compound-light microscopes in your students’ kits. Or, you can opt to utilize the Science Interactive Virtual Microscope (V-Scope). This advanced virtual microscope program simulates the use of a compound light microscope and includes a library of more than 80 interactive slides—ranging from bacteria to fruit flies to skeletal muscle—all using advanced technology and images from real slides. The V-Scope replicates everything that a student would do on a physical microscope, including raising and lowering the platform, turning on the light, placing and focusing slides, and more.

From examining and analyzing living organisms to conducting procedures that manipulate biological pathways and model genetic processes at the cellular level, our lessons will guide students as they investigate life itself.

Chemistry Kits

When assembling our chemistry lab kits and designing our procedures, safety is our highest concern. We choose materials that minimize risk, and we provide our students with the personal protective equipment they need to conduct their experiments safely.

Our hands-on chemistry lab kits contain sophisticated glassware and equipment equivalent to that found in campus laboratories, and our high-grade chemicals are delivered in small-scale quantities safe and convenient for home use and disposal.

Of course, in addition to safety, many instructors want to ensure that their students learn the same techniques and procedures they would in an on-campus lab facility. At Science Interactive, they do. We used the American Chemical Society’s guidelines for proper techniques to design our lessons so that students develop the same tactile skills they would learn in a traditional lab.

Environmental Science Kits

With climate change becoming perhaps the defining issue of the century, environmental science is continuing to grow in popularity. Students want to fight to save their planet, and at Science Interactive, we give them the tools to guide them on that journey.

Incorporating an interdisciplinary blend of concepts in biology, chemistry, physics, geology, and mathematics, our diverse array of environmental science lab kits will help your students develop the capabilities they need to tackle our essential environmental issues.

Through practical activities like calculating a carbon footprint and measuring water quality, students will address complex environmental problems including climate change, pollution, and conservation. These hands-on lessons will prepare them to shape and navigate the future of their planet.

Forensics Kits

Ready for something a little different? It’s time for your students to put their “CSI” caps on!

While working through these interactive lessons, students will gain core competencies in cutting-edge skills such as crime-scene sketching, latent print detection, and spot-testing for explosive residues. In addition to learning proper evidence collection and documentation techniques, they will use in-depth analyses of glass, hair, fibers, and soils as they engage in exciting investigations to determine how trace evidence is transferred between suspects, victims, and crime scenes.

Give your students the skills they need to crack even the toughest cases.

Geology Kits

At Science Interactive, we source high-quality rock and mineral samples, so your geology students can develop the proper skills to classify, identify, and describe the materials that make up our planet.

Additionally, through our engaging geology lessons, your students will gain hands-on experience investigating a wide range of topics, including rock formation, weathering, plate tectonics, and hydrology. You can even customize your course with an investigation about dinosaurs, earthquakes, glaciers, or mapping.

General, Organic, and Biochemistry Kits

Our GOB chemistry lessons are designed for non-chemistry majors, particularly those students majoring in health sciences. These lab kits contain tactile experiments to help your students develop proper chemical techniques and meet the requirements for pre-nursing and other allied health professions.

The standard course curriculum includes lessons on:

• Atoms, molecules, ions, molecular interactions, and chemical reactions
• The chemistry of compounds containing carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen chemical structures
• The properties, nomenclature, reactivity, and synthesis of simple organic molecules
• Macromolecules, their three-dimensional structure, and their roles in biochemical transformations

Our GOB curriculum is structured as a one-semester survey course, or it can be taught over two semesters. Instructors can also customize the pre-built curriculum and accompanying GOB chemistry lab kits with alternative experiments to meet their specific needs.

Microbiology Kits

Designed to be executed safely and efficiently from a student’s home, our hands-on microbiology kits recreate a tactile lab experience in a distance learning environment.

As with all of our curricula, student safety is our number one priority. We only provide level-one microbe cultures, so no additional handling or disposal protocols are required.

Our sophisticated microbiology lessons directly reflect the types of experiments students would perform in a tactile lab facility. Throughout these courses, your students will gain standard core competencies including methods for aseptic technique, collecting and incubating cultures, and describing and identifying microbes. Additionally, in order to accommodate your specific course requirements, we offer a vast array of media types, such as TSA, nutrient broth, motility agar, and MRVP broths.

As for microscopes, we can actually include compact compound-light microscopes in your students’ kits. Or, you can opt to utilize the Science Interactive Virtual Microscope (V-Scope), an advanced virtual microscope program that simulates the use of a compound light microscope and includes a library of more than 80 interactive slides.

Our microbiology lab kits can be customized to suit a variety of courses, including those requiring non-virulent sterile microbe cultures and those utilizing environmentally collected samples. Both real and digital microscope experiences are available.

Organic Chemistry

Organic chemistry is one of the more difficult disciplines to replicate in a distance environment because organic chemistry labs often require the use of high-tech instrumentation. To address this, we have scaled down our experiments to more manageable parameters and ensured that in situations where students cannot access such instruments, they are still learning the applicable techniques and concepts (e.g., analyzing provided spectra instead of using NMR or IR machines themselves). Additionally, all of our chemicals are delivered in safe microscale quantities, and we have adapted our experiments to use primarily aqueous solvents to limit volatility.

Our organic chemistry lessons are designed for non-chemistry majors, particularly those students majoring in health sciences or other specialties where organic chemistry is their terminal chemistry course. These lab kits contain interactive experiments to help your students develop proper chemical techniques and meet the requirements for pre-nursing and other allied health professions.

With organic chemistry, your students will investigate the components of life itself through the study of organic compounds and molecules. By examining the unique properties of carbon- and hydrogen-containing compounds, they will learn how these elements form the building blocks of the organic world. The standard curriculum includes lessons on topics such as molecular modeling, stereochemistry, and hydrolysis reactions.

Physics Kits

With our hands-on physics lab kits and lessons, students will perform exciting examinations involving motion, electricity, simple machines, and optics. They will cover basic physics concepts such as acceleration, gravity, and Hooke’s Law, all while utilizing sophisticated equipment, including capacitors, resistors, lenses, masses, and ramps.

While not all of the high-grade measuring equipment found in traditional physics labs can be replicated in the distance setting, we provide students with sophisticated, digitized simulations to help them make observations that would otherwise be impossible. This hybrid model of hands-on experiments interspersed with advanced simulations will let your students experience the joy of discovery as they uncover the forces that describe our universe.