A Novel Approach to an Online Microbiology Experiment Yields Greater Student Success

ABSTRACT An increase in online science course offerings requires a closer evaluation of the online laboratory experience. While it has been established that students can successfully learn from online laboratory simulations, there is a lack of knowledge regarding factors that impact student success. Grounded in the constructivist learning theory, a unique laboratory design was utilized to determine whether collaboration during an online microbiology lab experiment had an impact on student success. Additionally, the impacts of demographic factors were investigated. This study concluded that collaboration had a significantly positive impact on student success while demographics such as age, gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status did not have an impact. Although this illuminates the need for online lab developers to create collaborative science laboratory simulations that more closely mimic the traditional laboratory experience, more research is needed to elucidate additional factors that impact student success in the online science laboratory.