An investigation of course-level factors as predictors of online STEM course outcomes

This study analyzed students who took STEM courses online or face-to-face at a large urban community college in the Northeastern U.S. to determine which course-level characteristics most strongly predicted higher rates of dropout or D/F grades in online STEM courses than would be expected in comparable face-to-face courses. While career and elective STEM courses had significantly higher success rates face-to-face than liberal arts and major requirement STEM courses respectively, career STEM courses had significantly higher success rates online than would be expected, while elective STEM courses had significantly lower success rates online than would be expected given the face-to-face results. Once propensity score matching was used to generate a matched subsample which was balanced on a number of student characteristics, differences in course outcomes by course characteristics were no longer significant. This suggests that while certain types of STEM courses can be identified as higher or lower risk in the online environment, this appears not to be because of the courses themselves, but rather because of the particular characteristics of the students who choose to take these courses online. Findings suggests that one potential intervention for improving online STEM course outcomes could be to target students in specific courses which are at higher risk in the online environment; this may allow institutions to leverage interventions by focusing them on the STEM courses at greatest risk of lower online success rates, where the students who are at highest risk of online dropout seem to be concentrated. Highlights • Exploration of the impact of course-level factors on online STEM course completion • Career and elective STEM courses had higher face-to-face completion rates • Gap between online and face-to-face outcomes was less for career STEM courses • Gap between online and face-to-face outcomes was greater for elective STEM courses • Differential online outcome by course type is explained by student characteristics