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PROVO -- The chemistry professor behind a project to put chemistry and physics labs online is now behind BYU's newest project -- virtual biology.
Brian Woodfield first thought of putting labs in the virtual world as a grad student at the University of California at Berkeley. It lets students get their hands on lab work that would normally be too expensive to do in the regular classroom. It also teaches them the reason why they're doing the labs, not just the intended result of the experiment.
"Doing it on a computer in a virtual lab allows them to focus on the thinking," he explains, "because now they don't have to worry about making mistakes, or the cost, or the time associated with experiments."
It doesn't get your teen out of dissecting a frog, but it gives them access to labs they normally would never be able to do, including DNA and molecular work.
Woodfield's physics and chemistry labs are distributed by Pearson and reach around 3 million students worldwide, either in colleges or high schools. He estimates that with the debut of the new biology version, that number will double.
Because he is not a biology expert, he served as kind of a virtual student in putting together the program -- consulting with colleagues in BYU's biology department to find out what they wanted the labs to teach, and then learning them himself so he can find out how best to convey it online.
Woodfield began working on his chemistry lab when he arrived at BYU in 1997. The biology version's been in the work for the last three years.
E-mail: bbruce@ksl.com
