Julia Choate and Ramesh Rajan

By taking their physiology labs virtual, Professors Julia Choate and Ramesh Rajan are ensuring that their students are both benefiting from a hands on-education and finding joy in their academic pursuits.

Recently nominated for a 2024 Australian Financial Review Higher Education Award, their open-access education innovation tool addresses challenges like limited lab time and large class sizes – while also speaking to both academics’ passion for facilitating dynamic and democratic learning opportunities.

Fuelled by the support of the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute and the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, the Monash Physiology open-access virtual laboratories have empowered students and educators worldwide, creating a lasting impact on science education.

How have your careers in academia informed your passion for innovation in education?
Professor Choate: We’re both passionate educators, focused on enhancing the student experience by aligning our curriculum with how students actually learn. In science, observation and experimentation are central – getting practical lab experience isn’t just an extra activity, it’s where students truly develop critical thinking and problem solving skills by manipulating variables and seeing real outcomes.

Professor Rajan: Julia realised that large class sizes and limited lab time were becoming barriers to students fully engaging with complex equipment.

We both started as researchers, driven by a love for discovery, and along the way found teaching to be just as rewarding. But as labs became shorter and more focused on assessments, we found students were losing the joy of exploration.

That’s why we developed virtual labs – to let students practise before coming to the physical lab. This removed the stress of assessment and gave them the freedom to experiment, make mistakes and enjoy learning.

Professor Choate: As an undergrad, the lab experiments were the highlight of my education, and we wanted to bring that same excitement to our students.

Tell me more about the needs you were answering with the Monash Physiology open-access virtual laboratories.
Professor Rajan: The initial goal of the virtual labs was to overcome time constraints with equipment in physical labs. But they also allow us to simulate scenarios we can't replicate in real life. For example, in our hearing lab we study the effects of ageing, but it's hard to demonstrate that with 18-20 year olds.

With virtual labs, we can simulate conditions like hearing loss, vision issues like glaucoma, or complex gut functions that would otherwise be limited by ethics or cost. This way, each student can fully engage rather than just observing.

Professor Choate: By using virtual labs before the physical lab, students come in better prepared, which lets us push the boundaries of their learning. We can then move towards inquiry-based research, where they develop their own questions and experiments. The virtual labs also have built-in progress checks and variability – this means each student gets different results.

Professor Rajan: The human body is full of natural variability, and it's important for students to experience that early on. These labs give them a better sense of how science works in practice.

Professor Choate:The virtual labs are just part of a broader set of tools we've developed, including eBooks, puzzles and quizzes. We've been innovating in online learning for years, especially since 2012, and COVID has only accelerated this shift.

We’ve had so many colleagues jump on board with this initiative. The key to our broader success is that most academics have great ideas for teaching—our role has been to provide them with the technical tools to bring those ideas to life.

What does it take to be an innovative and enterprising academic? 
Professor Choate: As educators, we're more innovative than entrepreneurial. Having our product be publicly available is so important to us.

Two companies have approached us to offer our labs for a fee to other universities, but while we got pretty advanced in our negotiations, we turned them down because we believe these resources should be available to those who lack access, not limited to those who can afford it.

Professor Rajan: I experienced firsthand the challenge of studying theory without hands-on experience, as my university in India couldn't afford advanced equipment. We’ve always made our labs open-access so students worldwide can gain practical experience, even in resource-limited environments.

Our unwillingness to commercialise our product doesn’t mean we don’t share our innovations – we actively network with fellow educators. During the pandemic, I formed a global group of physiology educators, and many of them used our virtual labs to teach when students couldn't come to campus. They’ve since shared them widely with other colleagues. It’s fantastic to know we’re making an international impact.

What are your best tips for academics and university educators thinking about taking an innovative approach to education? And how can adopting this kind of mindset set you apart?
Professor Choate: To be innovative, you need both financial and departmental support – there's no way we could have succeeded without it, and we’re grateful for it.

For us, it’s not really about taking risks; it's more about pursuing what excites us and what we’re passionate about in teaching and enhancing student learning. We wanted to recreate the joy we experienced as students but with modern tools, keeping curiosity and discovery at the centre.

Professor Rajan: Having the right people on hand to manage the practical and technical side of the operation is crucial – our programmer is indispensable. I wouldn't have pursued virtual labs without someone with the expertise guiding me. Building a team with the right skills is essential for any academic thinking of taking an innovative approach.

What’s been the impact of your innovative education endeavour?
Professor Rajan: Our project started small, with just one lab, but as it proved more and more successful, we expanded. Soon, other staff saw the potential for their own teaching.

Having technical support made all the difference – many academics have great ideas but lack the technical expertise to implement them. Once we had a few labs up and running, more colleagues saw the value, gained confidence and got involved. The project’s grown from there.

What are the best lessons that you've learned throughout your career as you've started to become more innovative and creative in the way that you facilitate student experiences and success?
Professor Choate: One big lesson for me has been not getting stuck on failures. Early in my career, I thought everything had to be perfect, and I needed to appear as an expert. Over time, I learned it’s important to model imperfection – students need to see that it's okay to fail and learn from it. In labs, we emphasise that it's fine if results aren't perfect; that’s part of the process.

Another key lesson is finding the bravery to try new things, including figuring out the structures and people you need to help implement innovation. Find your people, get them on board and have the courage to get going.

Professor Rajan: Our success wouldn't have been possible without strong departmental support, particularly from Professor John Carroll, Dean of the Sub-Faculty of Biomedical Sciences, who saw our vision and provided initial funding.

The students’ positive feedback has also been crucial in motivating staff to continue innovating. It’s been a collaborative three-way process, with staff, leadership and students all playing a part.

Connect with Professor Rajan and Professor Choate on LinkedIn