This Next Generation Science Standards-aligned experience allows students to engage in authentic medical science learning through simulation and gameplay through innovative touchscreen and gesture interactives. Students will examine a patient, review symptoms and family history, choose and execute medical tests, make a diagnosis, and recommend a treatment course. Everything they need to be successful is right in the program.

MedLab's default setting is Auto Mode, which directs the teacher and students through the entire lesson. However, Auto Mode can be disabled at any time to customize the experience. MedLab Online was made as streamlined and user-friendly as possible, so teachers can focus on enriching discussion and reflection with the students.

Scientific and Engineering Practices

• Asking questions and defining problems
• Developing and using models
• Planning and carrying out investigations
• Analyzing and interpreting data
• Using mathematics and computational thinking
• Constructing explanations and designing solutions
• Engaging in argument from evidence
• Obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information

Cross-cutting Concepts

Patterns. Observed patterns of forms and events guide organization and classification, and they prompt questions about relationships and the factors that influence them.

Cause and effect: Mechanism and explanation. Events have causes, sometimes simple, sometimes multifaceted. A major activity of science is investigating and explaining causal relationships and the mechanisms by which they are mediated. Such mechanisms can then be tested across given contexts and used to predict and explain events in new contexts.

Scale, proportion, and quantity. In considering phenomena, it is critical to recognize what is relevant at different measures of size, time, and energy and to recognize how changes in scale, proportion, or quantity affect a system’s structure or performance.

Systems and system models. Defining the system under study—specifying its boundaries and making explicit a model of that system—provides tools for understanding and testing ideas that are applicable throughout science and engineering.

Energy and matter: Flows, cycles, and conservation. Tracking fluxes of energy and matter into, out of, and within systems helps one understand the systems’ possibilities and limitations.

Structure and function. The way in which an object or living thing is shaped and its substructure determine many of its properties and functions.

Stability and change. For natural and built systems alike, conditions of stability and determinants of rates of change or evolution of a system are critical elements of study.

Disciplinary Core Ideas

Middle School

• (MS-LS1-1) Conduct an investigation to provide evidence that living things are made of cells; either one cell or many different numbers and types of cells.
• (MS-LS1-2) Develop and use a model to describe the function of a cell as a whole and ways the parts of cells contribute to the function.
• (MS-LS1-3) Use argument supported by evidence for how the body is a system of interacting sub-systems composed of groups of cells.
• (MS-LS1-5) Construct a scientific explanation based on evidence for how environmental and genetic factors influence the growth of organisms.
• (MS-LS1-7) Develop a model to describe how food is rearranged through chemical reactions forming new molecules that support growth and/or release energy as this matter moves through an organism.

High School

• (HS-LS1-2) Develop and use a model to illustrate the hierarchical organization of interacting systems that provide specific functions within multicellular organisms.
• (HS-LS1-3) Plan and conduct an investigation to provide evidence that feedback mechanisms maintain homeostasis.
• (HS-LS1-7) Use a model to illustrate that cellular respiration is a chemical process whereby the bonds of food molecules and oxygen molecules are broken and the bonds in new molecules are formed resulting in a net transfer of energy.
• (HS-LS3-1) Ask questions to clarify relationship about the role of DNA and chromosomes in coding the instructions for characteristic traits passed from parents to offspring.

Common Core State Standards (CCSS)

Middle School + High School

• (CCSS ELA-LITERACY RI.9-10.1) Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.
• (CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.9-10.8) Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, assessing whether the reasoning is valid and the evidence is relevant and sufficient; identify false statements and fallacious reasoning.
• (CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.9-10.10) By the end of grade 9, read and comprehend literary nonfiction in the grades 9-10 text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range. By the end of grade 10, read and comprehend literary nonfiction at the high end of the grades 9-10 text complexity band independently and proficiently.
• (CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.11-12.1) Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text, including determining where the text leaves matters uncertain.
• (CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RST.11-12.1) Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of science and technical texts, attending to important distinctions the author makes and to any gaps or inconsistencies in the account.
• (CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RST.11-12.2) Determine the central ideas or conclusions of a text; summarize complex concepts, processes, or information presented in a text by paraphrasing them in simpler but still accurate terms.
• (CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RST.11-12.3) Follow precisely a complex multistep procedure when carrying out experiments, taking measurements, or performing technical tasks; analyze the specific results based on explanations in the text.
• (CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RST.11-12.4) Determine the meaning of symbols, key terms, and other domain-specific words and phrases as they are used in a specific scientific or technical context relevant to grades 11-12 texts and topics.
• (CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RST.11-12.8) Evaluate the hypotheses, data, analysis, and conclusions in a science or technical text, verifying the data when possible and corroborating or challenging conclusions with other sources of information.
• (CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RST.11-12.9) Synthesize information from a range of sources (e.g., texts, experiments, simulations) into a coherent understanding of a process, phenomenon, or concept, resolving conflicting information when possible.