The development of students’ critical thinking skills shall be facilitated by technological learning environments that encourage the practice of the skills. This study intends to investigate the academic performance of students based on the simulation-laboratory session. Two hundred twenty-nine pre-university students from Foundation Science, University Malaysia Sabah, had participated in the study. The test was provided to students before and after the lab session. The findings of pre-lab and post-lab tests were analyzed using descriptive statistics and paired sample t-test. Students, especially males and those with a boarding school background, demonstrate a significant improvement in their understanding of PCR concepts after conducting the simulation-based laboratory session. This improvement is reflected in higher scores on the post-test assessment. The performance of students shows a measurable increase after the implementation of simulation-based teaching methods. The standard deviations decreased from the pre-lab to the post-lab tests indicating that the scores became more consistent after the simulation-based laboratory session. The findings of this study will contribute to the growing body of research on the effectiveness of simulation-based teaching methods in science education.