Drive STEM Retention | Labster Science Simulations

The college-to-career STEM pipeline is leaking at both ends, with fewer students enrolling and completing STEM degrees.

Schools that adopt virtual labs and other evidence-based active learning strategies have found they move the needle on STEM retention, supporting university budgets, elevating students’ career prospects, and building a qualified STEM workforce. Discover how virtual labs can help solve the student retention challenge in education.

The Retention Challenges Facing Down STEM Programs

Students are struggling in STEM courses. Ten years ago, students were "misreading exam questions at an astonishing rate." Today, they are failing exams "with single-digit scores and even zeroes" according to NYU chemistry professor Maitland Jones, Jr. (1).

The good news is that students really like STEM. In fact, 20% of high school students plan to declare STEM majors. Yet sometime between their first and second years of college, 28% of them leave the STEM major — and another 20% drop out of college altogether (2).

A key driver of their decision to exit STEM is getting low grades in introductory STEM courses. Low-income and diverse students are falling through the cracks in these introductory courses, with lower average exam scores and higher course failure rates than their peers — even when researchers account for prior academic performance (3). Currently, students from low-income schools are only half as likely as their affluent peers to earn a STEM degree (4).

Strategies Schools Are Using To Increase Student Retention

Taking an active learning approach is a successful way to improve grades and pass rates in STEM courses. But what is active learning — and how can schools put it into practice? Active learning uses activities to involve students in cognitively processing educational content (7). Examples include inquiry-based, problem-based, project-based, and experiential learning strategies (8).

Complementing traditional lectures with active learning techniques and tools has been found to increase final grades by half a letter grade or higher, narrowing gaps in pass rates by 45% (9). This is critical for retention because many low-income and diverse STEM majors who struggle with gateway courses receive final course grades near, but below, the threshold required to persist in a STEM major. Active learning lifts them out of the danger zone (10).

Take the Product Tour to discover how Labster can help your STEM program drive retention.

Help Students Persist in STEM

It's all about the result: better student engagement. When combined with good teaching, virtual labs support student motivation, confidence, and self-efficacy, improving test scores and course pass rates.

Virtual lab simulations are interactive learning environments that place the student in a central, decision-making role where they’re challenged to apply their skills to solve problems within the context of a story that helps them quickly grasp and retain learning.

The action takes place inside a 3D model of a real biology, chemistry, or physics laboratory, but with a unique twist: the laws of time and space can be deliberately broken to demonstrate the principles that make real science work.