Labster advertises itself as the world's leading platform for virtual labs and science simulations. They offer simulations for both K-12 and higher education sciences courses, relying on a heavy gamification element. Each virtual lab and simulation incorporates and story line that students must address or solve throughout the course of the lab.

Labster offers a huge number of topics across multiple disciplines. For the sake of brevity, I have combined multiple subdisciplines into a single discipline name for ease of review:

• Biology
• Chemistry
• Engineering
• Earth Science
• Environmental Science
• Microbiology
• Physics
• Physiology

• Labster's website includes a demo of one of their labs. You can access the demo here.
• Video walkthrough is in development.

• Disciplines
  • Labster has extensive coverage of Biology, Chemistry, and Physics topics.
  • Labster only supports physiology in A&P. They have an incredibly limited amount of anatomy lessons.   
  • Labster has rudimentary coverage of microbiology, focused largely on microscopy and cell staining. Limited higher level techniques for more advanced courses.
  • Labster does not support Geology, Pharmacy Technician, or Forensics.
  • Labster does offer Engineering simultions, which we do not.
• 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.  
• 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.
• Content Structure - Labster provides some introductory content as a part of their curriculum, but the greater focus is on the story line/gaming element of the curriculum.
• Assessments - All assessments are multiple choice based. There is no option to customize the assessments for students.  
• Microscopy - Labster has minimal microscopy for their biology course, outside of two labs on the basics/how to use a microscope. There is some microscopy also available for microbiology, and none for A&P. V-Scope and our microscopy experiments incorporated throughout the biology disciplines 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.

Based on our win data analysis, our highest level of wins from Labster are coming from the following disciplines:

• Chemistry
• Microbiology

We have also wins in physics and biology.

• Price
• Virtual is Acceptable for Non-Majors
• No Broken/Missing Items
• No Delivery Delays
• Institutional Subscriptions Keep Price Down

• High Level of Glitches on System (Random Links/Pictures)
• Missing the Hands-On Aspect
• Great When it was Free, Not a Great Solution

• Labster Website
• SUNY Review of Labster Content - note this will download a Word doc