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Collected Item: “Virtual labs feel like a bad video game”

Give your story a title.

Virtual labs feel like a bad video game

What sort of object is this: text story, photograph, video, audio interview, screenshot, drawing, meme, etc.?

Photograph and text story

Tell us a story; share your experience. Describe what the object or story you've uploaded says about the pandemic, and/or why what you've submitted is important to you.

I'm currently adjusting to virtual lab for an upper-division physiology course, and my class is using a program called Labster for simulations. Picture a 2010's era, first-person video game where you are walked through 'levels' of the lab by a floating robot overlord called Dr. One. You get to put on a virtual lab coat, use a virtual iPad, and interact with virtual lab equipment. I've done experiments on computerized lab-rats, teleported into mitochondria, and clicked my way through the Krebs cycle. It feels very dystopian and unsettling, and would be funny if I wasn't being charged full tuition for what boils down to a Portal-2 knock-off without the cool aliens. Sometimes it's nice not having to commute to school. But mostly, I miss real lab and the feeling that I'm learning something meaningful by being in class.

Use one-word hashtags (separated by commas) to describe your story. For example: Where did it originate? How does this object make you feel? How does this object relate to the pandemic?

education, USF, H396, online learning, missing

Enter a URL associated with this object, if relevant.

https://www.labster.com/simulations/cellular-respiration-principles/

Who originally created this object? (If you created this object, such as photo, then put "self" here.)

Labster.com

Give this story a date.

2020-08-30
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