With increased advocacy for online science courses and labs, much research has been done to assess the effectiveness and satisfaction of individual courses and activities.  The question remains, do students taking online laboratory courses gain laboratory skills sufficient to achieve success in science (or related) fields.  To address this question, we looked at medical laboratory technology, practical nursing, and professional nursing majors and compared their success to the number of online lab science prerequisite courses taken. The results indicate that generally graduation rates are not significantly different but a few comparisons indicate increased success for students taking online science.  Statistical significance was determined using tests for equality of proportions with multiple comparison adjustments as needed.  These results suggest that both land-based and online science prerequisite courses can prepare students for allied health degrees.  The question remains whether online science courses can prepare students for STEM majors.

Online science laboratory course correlation with success in allied health majors

245th National Meeting (2013)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.