Enhanced Facilitation of Biotechnology Education in Developing Nations via Virtual Labs: Analysis, Implementation and Case-studies

Methods for educating students in biotechnology require intensive training in laboratory procedures. Laboratory procedures cost Universities in terms of equipment and experienced guidance which often come short in many developing countries. Universities need revitalizing approach and well-adapted curriculum especially in terms of laboratory practice. For enhanced education at the level of University-level laboratory courses such as those in biology or biotechnology, one of the key elements is the need to allow the student to familiarize laboratory techniques in par with regular theory. The Sakshat Amrita virtual biotechnology lab project focusing on virtualizing wet-lab techniques and integrating the learning experience has added a new dimension to the regular teaching courses at the University. Establishing virtual labs requires both domain knowledge and virtualizing skills via programming, animation and device-based feedback. This paper reports a cost-effective process used in virtualizing real biotechnology labs for education at Universities. The major challenge in setting up an effective knowledge dissemination for laboratory courses was not only the scientific approach of biotechnology, but included the virtualization aspects such as usage/design scalability, deliverability efficiency, network connectivity issues, security and speed of adaptability to incorporate and update changes into existing experiments. This paper also discusses an issue-specific case-study of a functional virtual lab in biotechnology and its many issues and challenges.