Abstract
The expectations within higher education to improve online STEM courses have continued to increase. The pressure to do so particularly pertains to the lower-level introductory courses that act as gatekeeping courses to various STEM-related majors. Rather than working alone to improve their courses, more instructors for these courses pair with the respective instructional designers at their institutions to refresh or revise, their online courses. This study examines the revisions of a two-part introduction-to-biology series of online courses with their respective online labs over the span of three years, and from a sampling of 905 students, compares the final scores from the courses and the labs between each iteration. Findings indicate that multiple iterations of a course have the potential to increase student outcomes and to decrease the student dropout rate over time. Additionally, purely online students can perform differently in response to course revisions in comparison to the online students who also enroll in non-online courses, implying that the needs of online-only students may differ from those who have a blended learning experience.
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Data Availability
The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to privacy or ethical restrictions.
Change history
15 January 2024
A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10763-024-10442-w
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Acknowledgements
The researchers would like to thank Dr. Megan Podsiad, Rachel Seaman, Kellie Mcdonald, and Joleen Cannon for their contributions and support during the research.
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This study was performed with permission from the researchers’ Institutional Review Board.
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Dr. Stefanie Gazda declares no competing interests. Dr. Brenda Such is an instructor at the University of Florida College of Education and is an associate director for the Center for Online Innovation and Production, which focuses on instructional design work.
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The original version of this article was revised: The original version of this article unfortunately contained misspelled author name in the Acknowledgment section as Kellie McDonald
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Such, B., Gazda, S. The Influence of Iterative Online Course Designs on Student Learning Outcomes in Large Undergraduate Biology Courses and Labs. Int J of Sci and Math Educ (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10763-023-10429-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10763-023-10429-z