Second Meeting of the VHEalthLab Program: Progress in Virtual Biology Labs Development
The second meeting of the “Virtual Health Lab in Higher Education – VHEalthLab” program took place online on July 11, bringing together participants from partner organizations and educational institutions from Cyprus, Greece, Spain, and Romania to review the project’s latest advancements. Since the program’s launch in December 2023, this meeting marked an important milestone with updates on the program’s progress and the next steps forward.
During the session, the team shared that two virtual biology labs have been successfully created and piloted, marking a major step forward for the initiative. These labs provide accessible, open-access virtual experiences that supplement in-person lab work, offering students a dynamic learning tool within health-related fields.
Work is also underway on the project’s educational platform, which will host the virtual labs and is being developed with broad accessibility in mind. Efforts are focused on translating the content into four languages to ensure it reaches a diverse audience across participating countries. Additionally, discussions highlighted strategies for integrating the virtual labs into academic settings, underscoring their potential to foster critical skills such as problem-solving, collaboration, and critical thinking, all essential to 21st-century health sciences education.
As they continue to collaborate on the VHEalthLab’s mission, the team is set to meet again in January to build on their progress and advance new phases of the program.
About the Program
The VHEalthLab program is funded by the European Union under the Erasmus+ Cooperation Partnerships in Higher Education initiative. The program’s main objective is to create high-quality, open-access virtual labs that align with STEM curricula and supplement traditional lab work. Coordinated by the University of Nicosia, with participation from the Ministry of Education, Sports, and Youth in Cyprus, this two-year initiative aims to advance virtual learning tools across health science education.
