Making laboratories accessible to students from the comfort of their own homes and facilitating education. That was the main idea behind the so-called virtual laboratories, which were created in collaboration between the Faculty of Agronomy and the Slovak University of Agriculture in Nitra. They were intended to help mainly during the pandemic, but they are still in use today. “They are websites that feature a scanned version of the Agrobiotech research center laboratory in Slovakia. Students can freely browse the virtual laboratories, and when they click on individual devices, information about what the devices are used for and how they are used is displayed,” explained Petr Sláma from the Faculty of AgriSciences.

The University of Krakow and the University of Debrecen subsequently joined the collaboration. Today, the BioFoodVirLabs website features three thematic areas: biology, biotechnology, and food science. “I see the benefit in sharing information with universities and students. We all use laboratory equipment differently. In one place, we can find out how various laboratory analyses are performed. For example, we have cell isolation from blood, isolation of mesenchymal stem cells from bone marrow, and cell staining methods for histological analysis,” added Sláma. The website with virtual laboratories is also expanding to include educational materials, lecture presentations, and knowledge quizzes.

According to Sláma, virtual laboratories have been well received by students. “I use them to teach immunology. They are a good addition for the new generation, because younger students prefer information that is accessible anywhere and as quickly as possible. Virtual laboratories meet this need perfectly, because students can browse the pages on their smartphones, for example,” said the teacher. The content of the website is in English, so foreign students can also use it.

Another innovation that has expanded digital education is the virtual dissection table. It was purchased by the Institute of Animal Morphology, Physiology, and Genetics to supplement the dissection room and histology laboratory. “It is a perfect tool that allows students to understand what an animal’s body looks like as a whole. In teaching, we proceed according to organ systems and do not dissect animals as such. On the virtual table, students can dissect the entire animal down to the smallest details, reassemble it, or look at individual organ systems and find out how they are related and how they are arranged in the body,” added Sláma. The virtual table is not intended to replace working with biological material, but primarily to simplify teaching. It can also be used to compare the anatomy of a large portfolio of animal species, or to manipulate and rotate the animal at will, which is not possible in practice.