Playtesting VenomCoLab!

One of our favorite activities is bringing our prototypes to students to try them out. We love the feedback we get and particularly love seeing the students engage deeply with the science!

VenomCoLab is an inquiry-based, collaborative science experience for 6th-10th grade students. Over 5 class periods, students take on one of four scientist roles: Zoologist, Biochemist, Molecular Biologist, or Pharmacologist and work together to study venom. Each group of students studies a venomous organism like marine snails, snakes, sea anemones, or scorpions to find peptides or proteins from venom to use as potential treatment for health problems including pain, cancer, blood clotting, or autoimmune diseases.

The students in each role performs distinct tasks using personalized websites and augmented reality or webVR on a computer or tablet. Students learn from each other and collaborate during activities like lab meetings and experiments, working toward their goal of developing new treatments.

We brought VenomCoLab to one of our partner schools November 30th and received excellent feedback from the students!

Students loved how they could have a lab meeting with each one occupying a different role and they could learn a lot about venom. They loved the teamwork activities and also liked how the program allowed them to proceed with the individual learning at their pace.

In addition, the students gave feedback on ways to continue improving VenomCoLab and what they hoped they would learn in future modules! We are thankful for their time and the feedback they provide to help improve and further build out VenomCoLab!