Formal and Informal Biophysics Education enabled by Interactive Biotechnology in the Cloud

Cloud experimentation labs, akin to the cloud computation paradigm, promise collaborative time-sharing of and lowered access barriers to life-science instruments for academia, industry, and education. We conceptualized and implemented a realtime biophysics cloud lab for interactive experimentation. This lab enables millions of Euglena phototaxis experiment/year at <1 cent/experiment, and scales to millions of users/year. This cloud technology is suited for paradigm changing and global impact on classic on-site as well as (massive open) online STEM education. We evaluated our cloud lab with over 700 participants in various settings, e.g., middle and high-school, college, and as open edX online course also reaching developing countries. Users were enabled to execute key scientific practices (open-ended and controlled experimentation, data collection, visual and quantitative data analysis, biophysical modeling – ending with self-initiated projects including discovery and hypothesis testing). This represents a paradigm shift of what students currently can do in either on-site or online STEM education, i.e., to passively observe cells through a microscope. This fills an unmet need for novel, deep inquiry approaches in STEM education as voiced by many national science standards.