Adventure-Style Game-Based Learning for a Biology Lab

Universities and medical companies face constantly the challenge of developing protective or adaptive countermeasures for the purpose of training new students and employees in the use of their laboratories and the assimilation of complex experimental methods. Yet the existing space and time limitations along with the high cost and sensitivity of some laboratory instruments, which are therefore not fully exposed to manipulation, result to a stiff and not always successful training procedure. The proposal deals with this problem by the creation of a game-like interactive simulation environment for the trainee to be trained in the absence of risks of undesirable consequences. The developed test-bed application is an interactive virtual environment simulating the biology laboratory at the Hellenic Open University. In this, the trainee acts by interacting with the laboratory equipment and light microscopes. By using such an application, the trainee is allowed to cause an unlimited number of unintended experimental tests and learn by "trial-and-error".