Teaching laboratory skills is time-consuming and resource intensive. Students must further be allowed to make mistakes in order to learn but this further poses safety concerns. Augmented/Virtual/Mixed reality systems have the potential to resolve such issues by providing safe, scalable, and inexpensive training environments that can provide an unlimited degree of instantaneous feedback to students during performance of lab procedures. Here we demonstrate that by using motion capture methods to spatially track the scientific tools manipulated by the user we can create virtual reality laboratory experiences with highly authentic tactile sensory feedback. Assessments tracking the impact of such "hands-on" virtual reality lab experiences on student learning and engagement within the context of a lecture-only biochemistry course will be discussed.
