• Quality Matters Certified!
  • The SIG A&P suite is QM certified as of Oct. 2021. Click here to access the official certificate.
• Interactive Introductory Content
  • Every lab incorporates at least one interactive (animation, summary image, interactive activity, etc.) in the Exploration to increase student engagement with the curriculum.
  • These are designed to blend seamlessly into the curriculum, and are always called out ahead of time in the paragraph prior with directions as to how to interact with the item.
• Dissections
  • There are four available dissection specimens in the A&P content: sheep brain, cow eye, sheep heart, and fetal pig.
  • All dissections are available in a physical format, digital format, or can be eliminated from the curriculum entirely.
  • All labs with dissection contains a single dissection, with the exception of Blood Vessels and the Heart, which has the heart and the fetal pig. In this lab, options are:
    • Fetal Pig and Heart
    • Biodigital Dissections
    • Heart with No Fetal Pig Dissection
    • No Dissections
  • When requesting a quote, be sure to state specifically whether students will be using physical, digital, or no dissection for each lesson chosen to prevent errors in pricing.
• Histology & Microscopy
  • The analysis of histology slides is a fundamental skill in A&P labs, and thus is included in most lessons. Clients have the option to select from using the V-Scope or a physical microscope. Standard kits are available using the V-Scope.
• Virtual Model
  • The virtual model is NOT the same as Biodigital Digital Dissections.
  • It is featured in each of the system-focused labs and focuses on anatomical features and orientations. It is designed to allow students to review the basic structures of each system prior to performing dissections.
  • For clients using the fetal pig option, it's a great pairing with the physical dissection, allowing students to connect what they are seeing in the pig to humans.
• Set-Up Videos
  • Set-up videos are incorporated into experiments to guide students through complicated techniques or orient students to utilizing various assets.
• Safety
  • An updated safety overview is required in all courses, and includes a safety video, safety contract, and all relevant information for students ahead of beginning their experiments.

• Senses
  • The Senses lab covers the four of the five senses (taste, smell, sight, and hearing).
  • In the first experiment, students dissect a cow eye (or perform the Biodigital eye dissection). This experiment can also be removed in the no dissection option.
  • In the subsequent three experiments, students test their hearing using a tuning fork, evaluate pupillary response, blind spots and afterimages, and explore the association between taste and smell.
  • Supplies include a ChemBag, tuning fork, cow eye, and dissection tools and pad.
  • Overall a very comprehensive lab covering both anatomy and physiology of the sensory organs.  
• Blood
  • This lab covers the composition of blood, as well as how blood type is determined.
  • In the first experiment, students evaluate blood cells using a microscope. This is a great opportunity to show off the V-Scope or discuss options for a physical microscope.
  • In the second experiment, students determine their actual blood type. This is a really cool experiment, and allows the student to both learn the technique, and about themselves!
  • Supplies include a ChemBag, blood typing tray, lancet, and slides if using a physical microscope.  
• Gross Anatomy of the Muscular System
  • This lab reviews the anatomy of the muscular system.
  • In the first three experiments of this lesson, students use clay to model muscles on a skeleton. This is a classic A&P activity that allows students to gain a real world appreciation of the structure of the muscular system.
  • In the fourth activity, students dissect the muscular system of a fetal pig (or perform the Biodigital full body muscle system dissection). This experiment can also be removed in the no dissection option.

Other good labs to demo:

• Physiology of the Respiratory System - If you are presenting this lab, focus on the second experiment. While the hands-on experiment is very simplistic, the second experiment shows an excellent example of a digital experiment being included where a physical experiment would be cost prohibitive.

• Cloud is WCAG 2.1 compliant.
• All videos are closed captioned.
• All images have Alt Tags.
• Interactives, including digital experiments, are all designed to be screen reader compatible.

• Carolina
  • Lessons
    • 42 total lessons (includes 7 virtual or dry labs)
    • Many of the digital/dry labs are duplicates - digital labs involve a digital component, dry labs require students to source their own materials.
      • For example, there are four labs on blood typing (a topic not typically covered in a biology course) - one with real blood, one with simulated blood, a dry lab, and a digital lab.
      • This also includes multiple dissection options (including two types of hearts, two types of kidneys)
  • Standard Kits
    • Anatomy (2 labs; $82)
    • Anatomy & Physiology (7 labs; $152)
    • Introduction to Anatomy and Physiology (4 labs; $128)
    • Physiology (5 labs; $140)
    • Introduction to Anatomy (2 labs, $50)
    • Neuroanatomy (2 labs; $50)
      • **Note that none of the standard kits appear to include microscopy/slides.
  • Competitive Information
    • Dissections - Carolina is a dissection powerhouse. They offer a number of dissections including multiple heart and kidney specimens. They also offer the rat and pig dissection for full body. They can beat us any day on dissection price because they are the leader in providing dissection organisms.
    • Microscopy - Carolina offers a simplistic virtual microscope that is far less comprehensive than the V-Scope. Select this link to view the Carolina virtual microscope. They also offer a microscope for students to purchase; however it is a children's microscope (the box says for ages 3+), which is not equivalent to a microscope that should be used at the university level. Some virtual options for microscopy, but limited to the skin, muscle, and cartilage.
    • Content Delivery - Carolina provides a printed or PDF lab manual that has procedures and a few questions. They do not have digital content or student portal platform/cartridges.
    • They do offer their content through Odigia, but this is a simple drop-in of their PDF manuals.
    • Content - Carolina offers limited introductory content and experimental support. The introductory content is majority text, very few images, and no interactives. Their experiments do not include set-up images and have very few support videos, leaving students to guess at how to set up their experiments correctly. Small number of assessments with no ability to customize or autograde.

• Labster
  • Lessons
    • 31 lessons on their website are considered A&P. These lessons largely encompass physiology experiments, with some cell biology-based experiments. Very limited Anatomy content.
    • Includes a mix of tutorials, experiments, and concept overviews, so not all of the items listed above would be considered experiments/labs.
  • Standard Kits
    • Labster offers various packages that vary in length of access time and number of interactives that can be accessed. Pricing is not readily accessible on their website but is generally cited online as less than $100.
  • Competitive Information
    • Content Coverage - Labster has generally good coverage of the cell biology and physiology, but substantially lacks in anatomy content. It would be difficult to sustain a formal A&P curriculum using the Labster content.
    • Microscopy - Labster has minimal microscopy for their A&P course, outside of two labs on the basics/how to use a microscope. V-Scope and our microscopy experiments incorporated throughout biology are far more comparable to an on-campus setting.
    • Dissections - Labster's content does not include any dissections that would support a second semester general biology course.
    • Lesson Duration - The estimated time required by Labster for their lessons ranges from 15 - 40 minutes. To meet the requirements for most colleges (2.5-3 hours per week in lab), students would need to perform multiple modules. In places where there is only a single interactive covering a topic, this could cause major problems for the instructor.
    • Pedagogy - Labster's content is highly gamified with overarching storylines that can distract from the lesson at hand. We take a more straightforward approach, presenting background content with critical information students need to complete the experiment, followed by the experiment, which takes an approach more comparable to on campus.  

• McGraw Hill
  • Lessons
    • 124 lessons are listed as A&P on their website. However, this also encompasses their greater Biology suite of lessons.
      • Of these, 34 of the lessons would be applicable to an A&P course.
    • In a number of topics, we cover in one lesson what McGraw Hill covers in multiple modules. For example, testing for starch, sugars, fats, and proteins are typically a single lesson in our content (Nutrition) vs. McGraw Hill having each molecule as a single interactive.
  • Standard Kits
    • No standards per se. Labs can be bundled with textbook in packages.
  • Competitive Information
    • Content Coverage - The McGraw Hill A&P content is in general more focused on physiology-based experiments. They do offer one virtual dissection and some histology, which would be considered anatomy. Larger specimen dissections are offered through a separate McGraw Hill brand (see dissections below).  
    • Dissections - The McGraw Hill virtual labs offer a virtual eye dissection, but no brain, heart, or kidney. Full body dissections (fetal pig, cat, cadaver) are offered through the McGraw Hill A&P Revealed program. The set-up of these dissections is very similar to the Biodigital virtual dissections. For more information, review this video.
    • Microscopy -  McGraw Hill does offer histology-based lessons. There are general labs on how to use microscopes as well. However, their histology content is limited to the four major tissue types. They do not offer any organ systems-based histology content, as we do in our lessons.
    • Content - The McGraw Hill lessons have limited introductory content. They include a list of key concepts and an overview, which are meant to provide introductory information. A "before you start" section with key techniques may also be included. There are no obvious learning objectives within the lesson. The overview is brief, and is likely developed under the assumption the student is pairing this with textbook reading.
      • For the demo lesson reviewed, the introductory content was eight sentences long.
    • Assessments - The McGraw Hill lessons include minimal assessments automatically, typically pertaining to creating a hypothesis, an experimental strategy, and a conclusion. Students can have multiple attempts to answer these correctly. If instructors want additional questions, they must be developed by the instructor (although McGraw Hill does provide a question bank to pull from).
    • Experiments - Experiments are set up in a point and click format with minimal opportunity to make mistakes. It appears that they are set up such that all students get the same answer. In contrast, our most recent digital developments have multiple possible answers to prevent students from cheating.

Are specimens preserved in formaldehyde?

• No, all specimens are stored in formalin-free solutions.

How do students dispose of specimens?

• Different cities and counties have different rules. We recommend students call their local waste management company.

How do I know that students are actually doing the dissections (correctly)?

• There are several ways to do this. Students are required to take photos with their name and date and upload them into Cloud throughout the course of their dissection. Some professors also have their students use a webcam to film their dissections.

Tell me about your histology slides.

• We have physical histology slides available with a microscope. Additionally, all physical slides are available digitally through our V-Scope. The benefit of the V-Scope is that students still need to go through the process of using the microscope to view the slides, without the cost of a microscope.
• There is a comprehensive overview lab on histology, called Tissues and Histology. Histology slides are also incorporated into each anatomy-focused lab.

We do Physiology separately from Anatomy. Can you separate those experiments out in a Custom Kit?

• Yes, we can do a lab alignment for your course. All we need is a syllabus, with a description of the labs you are performing.  

Do nursing programs accept virtual labs?

• We have many programs that use our lab kits and the courses are accepted for transfer.  
• Many times just having the conversation around our physical kit with real dissections can alleviate concerns of virtual only.

Do you have a microscope option?

• We do offer a microscope, and slides. All microscopy labs are written to be microscope agnostic, meaning they can be used with our digital or physical slides.

Do you have the clay muscle experiment?

• Yes - this is included in Gross Anatomy of the Muscular System.

Do you have a skeleton?

• Yes, it is included in a number of our labs, including the skeletal system, muscular system, and joints. It is a standing 42 cm. skeleton.

When building a demo, how to A&P labs in Experlogics align to those in Cloud?

• When building a custom demo for A&P, it is important to remember that microscopy labs in Cloud are built to be microscope agnostic - meaning the same content can be used for both the v-scope or slide version of the lab. However, this content is differentiated in Experlogics, with different v-scope and microscope versions for quoting. To build your demo, use the following table to identify the correct labs to add to your demo: