The Future of Health Education

Do you remember your ‘science spark’? That moment of intrigue. The first time you felt the excitement of science pique your curiosity and inspire you to pursue STEM. It may be a particular moment, or it may be hard to pinpoint, but it is a time where many scientists and health professionals remember developing a love for science.

Labster is helping create science spark moments for students across the globe, by nurturing a motivation to ask more questions, and providing the tools to answer them.

Labster is the world’s leading platform for virtual labs and science simulations. Using game-based design, Labster engages students with story-driven scenarios, helping to make science relevant. Their virtual science labs have been used by many universities including Harvard, MIT and Trinity College, and others internationally.

An example from a Labster simulation which teaches students about the concepts of antibodies and antigens, and teaches the basic techniques involved in blood type testing in the lab.

Labster’s vision to make science education accessible and to help teachers educate and empower the next generation of scientists to change the world, is one shared by many. Their mission is to accelerate the science teaching experience through their simulations and provide spaces for collective learning. Labster is hosting the Global Issues Series to do just this! The series connects the world’s leading thinkers and educators to discuss how best to prepare students to solve urgent problems in healthcare and climate change.

On Wednesday June 29th Labster successfully ran the second event in this series. The Future of Health Education event saw more than 500 people passionate about education reform come together to discuss the problems and solutions for improving Health Education accessibility and success.

The event panellists had an impressive 100+ years experience in Education between them. Sarah Jane Caban moderated panel 1 with Professor Yvonne Baptiste, Sharon Goldfarb, and Professor Michele Decker. They focused on the current crisis in health education. Specifically, the impact of inadequate resources on newly qualified nurses. Sharon Goldfarb explained “the third leading cause of death is hospital error … we are sending nurses into the field without the right skills, knowledge and attitude to prevent the one million people we're killing every year in hospitals”.

The first half of the event was led by SJ Caban and expert panellists: Yvonne Baptiste, Sharon Goldfarb and Michele Decker. They discussed the current challenges in healthcare education.

The panel asked how we can help better prepare nurses for when they enter the healthcare arena. Yvonne Baptiste elaborated that anatomy and physiology is a vast topic and a critical gateway course, but can also keep students from gaining admission to selective health care programs if they do not pass it successfully. Yvonne shared that “a lot of [her] students aren't quite sure how to learn science” and “have limited academic experience” and therefore as well as being a gateway, anatomy and physiology can be a gatekeeper to nursing school and other healthcare programs. This not only selects out the type of person coming into the field, but exacerbates the current nurse shortages seen in the US, and globally.

Support for individual students works better than remediation

The panel also discussed the problem of a high attrition rate. Sharon Goldfarb shared her success with methods to individualise student support, which saw the rate of students dropping out fall from 27% to 3%. She told the attendees that 100% of her nursing students passed the NCLEX exams, helping her community college achieve the highest NCLEX pass rates that year. It is clear that the right support is an important factor for retention in nursing school, especially for those from under-resourced educational backgrounds, but the expert panel went on to contemplate other key areas to provide better health education.

They discussed the importance of productive failure, or learning from mistakes, and how students are often penalised for making mistakes in education. Especially in a medical field where your work involves saving and/or preserving life, you cannot simply be allowed to freely make the mistakes necessary for progressing learning. But Labster is creating these opportunities, safely. By creating a low-stakes opportunity for students to practise their knowledge and skills and providing a physically safe way to learn without endangering their patients, simulation is a great tool for allowing “non-destructive” mistakes to guide learning.

It’s easier to stay up to date with technology tools

The event also discussed how traditional learning tools like textbooks are often outdated (by about 5 years on average) because of the associated resource burden required to revise, reprint, and repurchase textbooks. This is especially relevant in medicine and healthcare, where things change rapidly. In contrast, digital learning resources like Labster can be quickly updated, published, and delivered to educators and students - without extra cost. Digital tools are particularly useful for underrepresented students who may be studying their school work between shifts at work or alongside child care. The Labster app by example, supports devices running iOS, Android, and Chrome operating systems and can be downloaded as an App from the Apple Store or the Google Play Store, enabling students and teachers to access Labster from anywhere, at any time.

As well as supporting digital learning, Labster creates forums like the Labster Community Campus, where all health educators and science educators are invited to connect, develop skills and explore the latest Labster technology. Providing a place to gain access to exclusive leadership opportunities as well as classroom rewards without the obligation to be a customer! You can join the Community at campus.labster.com.

Peer support and funding for edtech tools

The panel also discussed the challenges which remain, including a discussion around access to funding for digital learning tools like Labster and top tips for applying for internal or external grants to cover the cost of edtech tools. Sharon Goldfarb explained “I think when you tell a compelling story - and everyone wants good, healthy, smart nurses out there - I've gotten everything I've applied for from college sources of internal funding”.

After a short break, the second panel was moderated by Mark Fuller, Product Marketing Manager at Labster, and included Mario D’Errico, Dr. Sarah Jayne Boulton, and Monika Starnawska. Together they further explored how Labster helps prepare students for successful healthcare careers.

The second panel was moderated by Mark Fuller and he was accompanied by Maria D’Errico, SJ Boulton and Monika Starnawska as they outlined the benefits of using Labster and digital tools in education.

Mark Fuller said “in order to be successful in nursing school, to graduate, pass a licensing exam and ultimately be a safe and competent nurse, you need to have a solid foundation and master the scientific concepts.” Supporting undergraduate educators to teach foundational concepts and skills is what Labster does best!

Teaching fundamental concepts & skills

Labster isn’t just for developing practical lab skills, but helps students to conceptualise theory and visualise invisible phenomena. SJ Boulton added “DNA in general and can be really abstract, like why does it bind the way it does, pairs why do we have base power and all these kinds of questions that nobody really wants to ask their teacher for fear of looking a little bit silly”.

Gaps in learning are always accumulating, making it difficult to master new content that builds on prior knowledge. Learning loss is particularly concerning in college/universities these days since the students experienced inconsistencies in virtual learning over the years of the pandemic. Unfortunately, many students don’t receive the help they need because they do not realise they have learning gaps or are embarrassed to ask questions.

“A lot of resources are there to visualise these hidden concepts and address the learning gaps that might exist and are becoming more prevalent” - SJ Boulton.

Labster can help because it offers targeted modules and is always available for self-paced use by using immersive simulations to encourage active learning, decision-making, hypothesis testing and, critically, experience of failure.

“You can watch a video and that's great … but that's very different from making a decision yourself and committing to it and then feeling like it's okay to fail and you can fail in the safety of your own home where only you and your instructor knows. And I think that's really, really valuable” - SJ Boulton.

The discussions made a compelling case for implementing edtech into the classroom. The benefits of using interactive tools like Labster are not disputed. But it can be difficult to envision how to integrate virtual lab simulations into an existing curriculum. The expert panel explained that Labster acknowledges that it can be time-consuming for educators to choose which of Labster’s hundreds of virtual simulations to include in their syllabi. Fortunately, Labster is able to help by recommending specific simulations to match the topics in your syllabus and the course learning objectives, for example, if a faculty member is teaching a diagnostic technique such as PCR, they might assign a Labster PCR simulation as homework the day before, and many educators take advantage of this free service already.

SJ Boulton said “now at Labster, we can work with you to offer curriculum integration assistance or what we call course mapping … so that curriculum integration piece doesn't have to take a huge amount of your time.”

Overall, the event highlighted how Labster’s guided learning pedagogy helps give students the motivation and knowledge to complete each simulation, and how improvement in these areas increases student confidence and success. Students can start with Labster’s offline, downloadable written lab manuals, progress through the interactive simulation by answering the embedded quiz questions, reflect on the experience with their instructor and peers in class, and then consolidate their learning after class in their Labster lab report template. And so, Labster is adaptable and grows with the student through their learning journey.

“Where I think Labster can help is you don't have to be on campus and you can still have a meaningful learning experience. As long as you've got a laptop and an Internet connection, you can access a Labster simulation … from the comfort of your home, maybe in-between school drop-offs, you know, or in between shifts at work. It's something where there's an opportunity for asynchronous learning” - SJ Boulton.

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Sad you missed the event? Is this blog giving you FOMO? Well, if you visit https://www.labster.com/global-issues-series-health/ you can now register to watch the event on-demand to make sure you don’t miss out on any of the advice, experiences and tips from the session. To avoid missing future opportunities be sure to take advantage of access to the world’s leading educators and thinkers, by getting involved in the Labster Community Campus. Whether you are already a Labster lover or not, this is a free space where you can learn from peers and keep up to date with the latest in science, education and simulation.

In the meantime, share your science spark below!

Author: Jodi Barnard | @notbrainscience