Study finds that STEM students are learning just as well in online courses as classrooms

According to a new study by Cornell University, STEM students learn just as much in online classes as they normally do in traditional brick-and-mortar ones. Researchers of the study divided 325 students into three different classroom styles for two courses: a fully online class through a program called OpenEdu, an in-person course as their local university and a blended version combining both. Demand for higher education is surging in the digital economy we now live in, but the price of a college education has ballooned and we don’t have enough people to teach these courses, especially in more rural areas, said Rene Kizilcec, co-author of Online Education Platforms Scale College STEM Instruction With Equivalent Outcomes at Lower Cost, which was published April 8 in Science Advances. This new study offers the best available evidence to judge whether online learning can address issues of cost and instructor shortages, showing that it can deliver the same learning outcomes that we’re used to, but at a much lower cost. However, the study also found that online students reported feeling less satisfied with their course experience compared to students in in-person and blended classes.