We appreciate the thousands of instructors, students and teaching assistants who use our platform to get their work done. 2020 was full of twists and turns. On a basic level, it changed what education ‘looks’ like. While the year was challenging, it reinforced why we do what we ‘do’ here at LabArchives.

2020 showed us that with the right tools and the right support, we could work and learn from anywhere. It also showed us how important it is to be able to access your work from wherever you are.

From March 2020 onwards the industry saw educators mobilize with incredible speed to keep their student’s moving forward. We saw ‘work-arounds’ emerge from every corner. We witnessed it in the news and online, heard about it via Zoom calls and watched it happen within LabArchives. 

While our users worked hard to continue chasing success this year, we did too – and we did it in a way that supported their specific needs during this unprecedented time. We’ve compiled some of our 2020 highlights below that capture the work that happened in LabArchives – on both the front and back ends. 

In early 2020 we released Lab Builder – our online, lab course content library. Lab Builder:

• Integrates with LabArchives ELN for Education for easy instructor access. 
• Contains 500+ interactive labs that are free for instructors to use in their courses.
• Contains labs designed specifically for remote, in-person and blended instruction.
• Contains labs on subject areas that range from astrology to cell biology. 

While we added course content to support instructors, we also made improvements to the ELN itself that were designed specifically for education. Over the course of the year our Development Team put together hundreds of updates and improvements including a much sought after ‘Copy-To’ feature.

Finally, we created opportunities for LabArchives users to connect with us, and to support one another, as much as possible:

• We hosted education boot camps across our three global regions. These were designed to help instructors go digital.
• We hosted our first ever virtual user group which included over 700 participants in the U.S. session alone.
• Over 2,250 users logged into these sessions across our three regions in the last three months of the year.

While much of what we ‘do’ here at LabArchives is in the virtual space, people are always the most important. In 2020:  

• We expanded our Support Team to include almost 24 hour live coverage (business days).
• Added and expanded a dedicated Enterprise Success Team which has staff on three continents. 
• Maintained an average of under 30 mins for response time. 
• Launched interactive forums for site administrators and users to support one another.
• Launched a website with a public knowledge base to include all LabArchives products. 

While collaborating with our users was a big theme of 2020, collaborating with our peers was, too. In 2020 we expanded our partnerships to include 32 partners. We also partnered with Vernier to support remote learning.

2020 was a big year. For our users, and for us. But we’re not done yet. In 2021 we’re excited to continue supporting our 580,000+ users around the globe in a way that works for them, and these times. To our users, thanks for supporting us.