Virtual Labs Offer an Innovative Approach to Mitigating Inequality in STEM

As the United States grapples with the ongoing reality of systemic inequality in the workforce, STEM education is often heralded for its potential to catalyze social mobility for women and minority groups. Progress in this area has long been elusive, but there are encouraging signs that interactive virtual learning solutions could help realize the promise of STEM education for social change. 

To understand how virtual labs might help level the playing field for students in the US and beyond, let’s first take a look at what the research has to say about inequality in STEM and why it matters.

STEM Jobs Pay Better than Most, But Minority Groups are Getting Left Behind

Recent findings from the Pew Research Center tell us that minority groups and women continue to be underrepresented in STEM fields. For example, data from 2018 indicates that Black Americans comprised just 7% of students graduating with bachelor’s degrees in STEM fields, in spite of representing 12% of the total population. Statistics do not improve in the labor market, where Hispanic employees account for only 8% of all STEM workers despite representing 17% of the workforce.

These stark findings are critical because when it comes to equitable pay, U.S.Department of Labor statistics show that STEM jobs offer substantially elevated compensation in comparison with most other fields, and STEM opportunities are also growing at faster rates. In other words, data indicates that many of the best jobs of the future will be in STEM, and that minority groups are disproportionately being left behind.

Drop-Out Rates in STEM Exceed Other Fields

Taking a broader look at disciplinary trends across academia, schools are facing steeper student retention challenges in STEM than in other fields. In fact, graduation rates for science and engineering majors are roughly 20% below those in other fields, with close to half of all STEM students either switching their degrees or dropping out altogether.

Critically, 60% of STEM drop-outs occur during a student’s first 2 years. These are the years when the learning curves and gaps are steepest, and when at-risk students are mostly likely to throw in the towel. 

For the general population, this effectively means that gainful employment in lucrative STEM positions is reserved for a narrowing segment of the labor market as a whole. For minorities, this effect is magnified by their disproportionately low representation.

Given this context, there is an urgent imperative to address STEM inequality. In the digital age, interactive learning technologies may have a vital role to play.

Interactive Education Technology Helps Students Overcome Hurdles with Self-Paced Learning

While still novel to some, an increasing number of universities and high schools are adopting immersive virtual science labs to enhance student success, especially in gateway STEM courses where the building of foundational skills lends itself especially well to standardized virtual lessons.

This approach is predicated on leveraging gamification as a resource designed to spark students’ intrinsic curiosity, while providing a framework for students to familiarize themselves with core concepts in a self-paced format. Virtual labs can be anything from a three-dimensional simulation of a common lab procedure, to interactive scenarios where students learn and apply science towards solving real-world problems.

Students can attempt a virtual lab as many times as they need before coming to class, which reduces the pressure on struggling learners to keep up with their peers. Studies have shown that student test scores improve after they engage with virtual labs, with the students who struggle the most leading the pack, recording score improvements as high as 24%.

Self-Motivated Learning Outside of the Classroom Empowers Educators Inside the Classroom

For educators, interactive science simulations can translate into higher-quality time in the classroom in several ways. Students will often remember key concepts from experiences during virtual labs, which they share in discussion the day after. “The students get engaged by doing it,” remarks Rodolfo Negri, a professor from the Sapienza University of Rome who uses virtual labs in his bioinformatics course. “And that’s very important because if they get bored, then you don’t go far as a teacher.”

In an effort to measure the impact of virtual labs on student motivation and engagement, one study found that students who used a virtual lab as part of their course were four times more likely to say they planned on pursuing a career in STEM.

Additionally, difficult procedures can be practiced in preparation for wet labs. This translates into smoother lab experiences where educators waste less time focusing on common mistakes. Educators can also introduce new labs which might have otherwise been cost-prohibitive or constrained by limited time.

“I really appreciate how the condensed format helps students see labs through to the end. For biology, even if I were to organize a three-hour session, the likelihood of them actually getting a result at the end is very low,” says Bina Rai, a Senior Lecturer at the National University of Singapore. “Most experiments require a few days of incubation and the right skills to get the results that you want. With [virtual labs], you always get to the end." 

By making science fun and empowering students to engage with science on their own terms, virtual labs offer educators an innovative new resource to help bring about a more equitable STEM workforce in the United States and beyond.

About Labster: Labster offers interactive, 3D virtual science labs that bring science to life. Labster helps students visualize theory, access state-of-the-art lab environments, and take their learning beyond the classroom, from the quantum realm to the surface of Mars. Expand your curriculum, target learning needs, and foster content mastery to help train the next generation of scientists.

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