STEM Enrollment Growth: Online Labs Drive Student Retention:

Changing Higher Ed podcast 230 with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and guest Dr. Caitlin Runne-Janczy

Transcript: Changing Higher Ed Podcast^® 230 with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and guest Dr. Caitlin Runne-Janczy

Welcome to Changing Higher Ed^®, a podcast dedicated to helping higher education leaders improve their institutions. With your host, Dr. Drumm McNaughton, CEO of The Change Leader, a consultancy that helps higher ed leaders holistically transform their institutions. Learn more at changing higher ed. com.  And now here’s your host Drumm McNaughton.

Dr. Drumm McNaughton: Thank you David. My guest today is Caitlin Runne-Janczy, Chief Academic Officer for Scientific Interactive. In case you’ve not heard of SI, they provide hands on and virtual lab experiments, curriculum kits, and a lab management platform so students can study and participate in science lab courses from anywhere.

Caitlin’s an experienced director of curriculum development and online learning. and focuses on STEM laboratory education.  SI recently conducted a survey to better understand the enrollment trends in both online and on campus courses, how those compare to broader institutional trends, as well as to uncover the ways administrators and instructors are delivering authentic lab courses both in person and online to support student success. Caitlin joins us today to talk about the results of the survey and what colleges and universities can do to improve students time in the labs.

Drumm McNaughton: Caitlin, welcome to the show.

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: Thank you so much for having me here. I’m really excited to talk a little bit more about science with you today.

Drumm McNaughton: Well, that’s great, especially seeing pretty much every college that I know, the presidents, the provosts, are all concerned about, “how do we do science online?” which is one of the areas that you’re an expert in. So please give us a little background on, on you and how you came to this point with Science Interactive.

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: I have a background in biochemistry. I did my undergraduate education at Marist College where I got a BS in biochemistry and went on to get a PhD at the University of Iowa, in pharmacology. And I’ve always

Drumm McNaughton: wait a minute. You’re one of those smart

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: Yep. Yep. I am. Oh my goodness, yes. I come from a family of educators, primarily in the K through 12 space, but my passions always really revolved around the sciences, and wanting to give students a better access to science education. So when I completed my PhD I ultimately decided not to seek a more research or academic career and wanted to find a space where I could support science education and broaden the number of students who have access to it, which is how I wound up at Science Interactive.

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: I’ve been here for close to 10 years and I’m a chief academic officer and I work with our team of scientists, instructional designers, and graphic designers to build, we built over 450 hands-on and digital lab activities for students who are pursuing STEM courses through an online modality.

Drumm McNaughton: That sounds really interesting, cause I remember I was, my undergrad was in physics and I can remember time in the lab, with the professor. My favorite was Heir Dr. Professor Kalam. He was German, heavy German accent, he got his PhD at Harvard, and he taught for many years. So, he had the Boston accent on top of the German accent. The man was brilliant, absolutely brilliant. In the two semesters I had with him, quantum physics and just regular, old, atomic physics. I only saw him refer to his notes one time in a lecture.

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: That is impressive.

Drumm McNaughton: Very impressive and so I understand what it’s like to be in the lab. But one of the things that I taught online for many years, one of the things that was challenging is how do you get those lab courses online to where they’re meaningful, et cetera.

Drumm McNaughton: So you’re with Scientific Interactive, you supported over 600 schools with online labs. You send stuff out to students. Tell us a little bit about how that works.

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: Yeah, so we support 14 different science disciplines, ranging from your basic chemistry, biology, and physics up to some higher-level courses like A& P and microbiology, and even some non-majors or criminal justice related programs like forensics.

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: So, we work across a vast spectrum of science courses. We also support some technical and allied health training through our pharmacy technician program. And what we do is we work with faculty across the country to identify the key labs that students need to perform on campus. And then our team of scientists collaborates with those faculty to develop experiments that are safe for students to perform at home. In the absence of an instructor side by side.

Drumm McNaughton: It sounds interesting when we talked about this before you say you mail the stuff out to students.

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: Yes.

Drumm McNaughton: How about the lab equipment, do you send that too?

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: Everything. So our kits will contain everything from beakers and graduated cylinders that you’d find in your lab bench to dissection specimens for our A&P. We send out fetal pigs and brains for biology. Some perch and clams, a little, the whole spectrum of animals, as well as microbes for our microbiology courses.

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: So, everything that a student needs from the labware to the chemicals to the dissection specimen are all going to be contained within that kit. That kit is going to be developed one on one with an instructor to really tailor to their learning objectives in the labs that they’re doing either on campus or that they want to perform in that online modality.

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: And so, we ship these kits to students all over the world, primarily in the United States, but, as far away as, to military bases overseas, and I’ve even had one student who has performed their lab kit on a submarine during their deployment. You can bring him anywhere.

Drumm McNaughton: I certainly hope you didn’t send pig’s brains to the submarine.

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: Pigs and brains on the submarine. No, that, that would have smelled a little.

Drumm McNaughton: Yeah, most definitely. In moving forward and exploring more, you’re not doing this in a vacuum. You’re working with the professors to make sure that you’re meeting their learning objectives, but one of the things that’s interesting is you just did a survey called “The State of Online Science Lab Courses”. Tell us a little bit about that because i think that’s going to help explain what’s happening with on the ground versus online labs etc.

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: Absolutely. So, this is our second annual lab report. We had to go with the lab report title, to keep it consistent with our student experience. We survey deans, department chairs, faculty and students to really understand their experience in taking a lab course online. In particular, we wanted to understand, are labs online gaining traction and how are faculty ensuring quality and effectiveness, and addressing the challenges of offering laboratory courses without a professor side by side?

Drumm McNaughton: So in understanding these things let’s talk through the various pieces. Who were you surveying for the most, the demographics of your study?

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: Yeah, absolutely. So for our students, we had almost 1900 students participate. They represented students who had taken our courses, other manufacturers courses designed by the institution themselves. Some did hands on, some did digital. But 91 percent of those students who participated had taken at least one online lab course in the last year. And notably, just over half, 54 percent of those students were science majors.

Drumm McNaughton: Okay.

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: Yeah, we were really surprised to see that number as high as it was. Many people think of online lab courses being for non major students.

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: For our faculty and administrators, we had close to 300 participate. 75 percent of those were faculty, 25 percent were admins. And of that group, at least 50 percent had taught at least one online lab course in the last year, and a little bit over half, 60 percent were from community colleges, with the other 40 percent representing more traditional four year schools.

Drumm McNaughton: Now when you say admins, you’re talking department chairs.

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: Deans typically participating. Yep.

Drumm McNaughton: Oh, okay. So you had, besides just the faculty doing it, you had some serious administration

Drumm McNaughton: as well.

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: We were very excited. We brought in the deans for the first time this year and we’re excited to see, a good level of participation there.

Drumm McNaughton: So tell me a little bit about your findings, because I found those to be fascinating.

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: Yeah. Yeah. First things first, when it comes to online enrollments, if you’re familiar with Quality Matters and the CHLOE 9 survey they do each year, they’ve shown that online enrollments are growing while on campus enrollments are declining, unfortunately.

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: And so we wanted to look at science courses and lab courses in particular, and our data actually really mimicked what CHLOE was seeing. Our deans and department chairs reported greater than 70 percent increase in online lab enrollments and a corresponding 56 percent decrease in on campus lab enrollments. We were really quite shocked to see those numbers. And a lot of this corresponded to student demand.

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: Of our students who’d taken an online lab course, 88 percent reported it was really important for them to have that opportunity, and 60 percent of those students would have enrolled elsewhere or not enrolled at all if an online lab option hadn’t been available.

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: Yeah, so really honing in on that need for the non traditional student who maybe can’t get to campus for that three hour block of time midday, due to some sort of obligation that prevents them from getting there.

Drumm McNaughton: Yeah. When you were going through the demographics, did you separate out the traditional students who were going to “on campus” versus “online” versus “hybrid” or taking both? Did you separate out those demographics?

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: We have not done that yet. That’s something we do want to go back and look at to see how that differs between the three groups. This is looking at our overall number of students who reported taking at least one online course.

Drumm McNaughton: Okay. Yeah, because I think that’s going to be a major thing. What I’m seeing as a trend is traditional age students, more and more, are taking online courses and sitting in their dorm rooms taking them.

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: It’s very interesting you bring that up. That’s one thing that we’ve actually anecdotally heard quite a bit of with the lab kits. Many of those are designed with a home environment in mind and one thing we’ve been focusing on, really since COVID, is adjusting some of the pieces that we put together to be more amenable to do in a dorm because we are seeing that growth in, anecdotally, students who are performing these labs in a dorm environment, which is very new for us.

Drumm McNaughton: Yeah, and I would have to think that would be going against some of the dorm regulations.

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: Back to our pigs, right?

Drumm McNaughton: Pigs, chemicals that blow things up, et cetera, et cetera.

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: You know, you bring up a great point there with safety and chemicals and that’s one thing we really focus on is they get very small volumes of chemicals to ensure that we’re not going to have any home or dorm explosions.

Drumm McNaughton: Yeah. Yeah. That would be a thing. Cause you ship these things, FedEx, UPS, however, to the students. So when students get to a lab, they’re not necessarily prepared for how to use the lab equipment. In high school, most of them had chemistry or physical sciences. I’m thinking back to the courses names probably have changed since I was there, 120 years ago, but, with that students may not be prepared for how to function in a lab.

Drumm McNaughton: So, what do you do with that?

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: Yeah, so we do see a lot of our enrollments are in more traditional first year programs and courses. So things like Gen Chem, Gen Bio, Gen Physics. Where a lot of our students for our non traditional, it may have been several years since they’ve been in a high school lab. So we really focus quite a bit on preparing them, one on the safety front and two, making sure they’re prepared to use the various pieces of equipment. And we collaborate with our faculty to really build that support for students.

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: So from our end, we provide instructional videos, a full safety lab. Students can’t actually get into any of the other labs until they’ve completed the safety lab, but our instructors also supplement here. In some cases, they do synchronous sessions for students who maybe have challenges. They, may want to hop on a Zoom call, they do digital office hours. We have some schools that even do digital lab partners where they hop on Zoom and are able to work side by side with a partner even though they’re not in the same room.

Drumm McNaughton: That’s interesting, virtual lab partners. So they’re both doing the experiment simultaneously, or is one doing the experiment and one observing and coaching on how does that

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: work?

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: No, they’re both doing it simultaneously. So each student is going to get a kit and maybe one is in Texas and one is in New York, and they can hop on Zoom and both work through that experiment and have the opportunity to, you know, bounce questions, ideas, off of each other, and really serve in that more traditional lab partnership that was really an essential part of my science experience when I went to school,

Drumm McNaughton: So how does the faculty member interact? Does it really depend on the faculty member and the student?

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: It really depends on the faculty member. We try to build an infrastructure within our platform to provide feedback to students directly on the lab results. But a lot of that, it really is on the instructor side. We have some instructors who build their own videos and supplement what we offer for their students, like I mentioned, digital office hours, message boards, where students have the opportunity to share data, troubleshoot. It really depends instructor to instructor, but we see a lot of instructors who really take a lot of time and care to ensure that the students have those supports built into the lab experience, because we know in many cases, they’re working on their own, with equipment that is unfamiliar to them, like you mentioned before.

Drumm McNaughton: So Caitlin, having online science courses is incredibly important, not only for gen ed, but even for majors as well. Overall, how does this work? Are you and others seeing a growth in the online education in the sciences and areas where there needs to be labs?

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: Absolutely. Absolutely. When it comes to, institutions like Arizona State, for the four years, and Central Piedmont Community College. Some of these schools are seeing 15 to 20 percent growth in enrollments year over year within their science programs. So there continues to be a growth there and a need for opportunities for students to have these lab courses online.

Drumm McNaughton: And with that growth in online, I would assume that from a professor’s perspective, it’s very different on how they’re going to interact. Is that a fair statement?

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: Absolutely. Typically, the instructor will not have face to face time with their students, right? Directly, one on one, barring a Zoom meeting or some sort of digital office hour. It really is a very different approach in many cases for the faculty member as they approach designing that course to ensure that the students have the supports they need to be successful in that lab course.

Drumm McNaughton: That makes perfect sense because every faculty, when you take a look at course syllabi, across a spectrum, everyone approaches their subject a little bit differently.

Drumm McNaughton: Some of them are closer, but that must make challenges for folks such as yourselves who do these online science programs.

Drumm McNaughton: Do you have, I would say maybe four or five different approaches that a faculty member can pick from? Is this is the way we want to do it, or is it total customization?

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: So we offer standard kits that align to what, a typical syllabus. If you think of anatomy and physiology courses, most often you’re going to cover some basic biochemistry and the brain and the muscles in the first semester.

Drumm McNaughton: you’re mailing cadavers out to people too?

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: No! No cadavers yet! No, I can’t.

Drumm McNaughton: I heard “yet”.

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: If I can find a way, maybe we’ll change that in the future.

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: But certainly there are some courses that have a very distinctive pattern to how they’re taught. And so what we’ll do is put together a standard kit. But most instructors do have a set of learning objectives, they’re all a little bit different. They’re a little bit different in terms of the labs they’re going to incorporate into their course. And so in that case, customization is a great way to select the labs that are most relevant. And then in some cases, instructors are going to look at virtual labs and hands on labs and look at the balance. Some labs can be taught virtually. If it’s too hazardous to do in a home environment, if the equipment is too expensive or too large to put in a kit, and some can be done hands on where that equipment is, really amenable to a home environment.

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: Although some might argue the pig is not amenable, but

Drumm McNaughton: Yeah. I w I would say not, unless you’re planning to roast it after you finish it, but

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: don’t do that.

Drumm McNaughton: No, probably not with the formaldehyde is probably not a good taste.

Drumm McNaughton: So anyway, you’ve seen these things and Scientific Interactive has been doing this for quite a long time. Obviously the growth in the market has been there to sustain the company, but there’s certain things that come up against this that I would think, we talked a little bit about safety, we didn’t talk about lab setup. That’s obviously, I’m thinking from a chemistry perspective, you could burn your house down fairly easily, I would think, if you’re playing around with bunsen burners and things along these lines.

Drumm McNaughton: What are some of the safety considerations that companies like yours take into effect?

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: Yeah, so first thing off is always personal protective equipment, getting gloves, goggles, etc. to the students. So as I mentioned, we support very small volumes of chemicals. In addition to that, instructions for safety considerations for the student are really essential. We want students to know how to set up their home. If they have children, if they have pets, how do they approach setting up their lab space so that no one is going to get injured or hurt in the process. And of course with that, many of the companies who support hands on labs at home do cover liability insurance for the institution should anything ever happen. They would be supported in that way.

Drumm McNaughton: Interesting. I could just imagine seeing the lawyers reading through this liability stuff. That would be interesting.

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: Oh, yes.

Drumm McNaughton: So the big question I think I have is accreditation,

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: Mm hmm.

Drumm McNaughton: Getting accreditation from both institutional accreditors and programmatic, and I think programmatic would probably be more challenging.

Drumm McNaughton: Tell us a little bit about how accreditation works because it’s the institution applying, but obviously if you’re doing something online, to be able to see and do these things.

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: Yes. Of course, accreditation is something that is done at the institutional level. When it comes to accreditation, and I’ll use our pharmacy technician programs as an example. Schools are looking to get ASHP accredited for their online programs to ensure that students can go on and to get that, pharmacy technician certification. The lab kit, that they use is one portion of the greater submission and clients, of ours like Aiken Tech and CareerStep have gone through and used the kit as one greater portion towards getting that accreditation through ASHP.

Drumm McNaughton: With that, the institution goes through their programmatic accreditation. The accredited takes like DEAC, they have the institution send them their curricula and they review the curricula. When they come to something like this i’m sure it gets far more scrutiny than it would, if WASC or SACSCOC or someone, was coming to a institution to observe course rooms labs.

Drumm McNaughton: What are some of the things that the accreditors are looking for with online lab courses?

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: In many cases, they’re looking for that hands on component to be retained. In many cases, there are options for hands on, and like I mentioned, virtual only. That hands on piece is really essential, particularly for majors courses, to ensure that students do have the transferable skills as they accelerate further in their degree program, and they can perform the techniques they need to continue down that path for their degree completion.

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: So that’s probably the number one thing we get questions about.

Drumm McNaughton: Okay, what are some of the other questions you get?

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: Obviously, safety in that remote environment always comes up. Questions around accessibility are very important. As well as quality of the materials that are being provided particular ones that we see quite frequently.

Drumm McNaughton: Okay, and we talked about pharmacy techs. You have this for nursing as well, for a lot of lab works. The other big thing with accreditation is measuring student learning outcomes. My guess Is it’s going to be the same as it would be in a physical lab, you’re just doing it in a different place. Is that a fair statement?

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: It is. And what we see in talking to faculty members is that those who are doing hands on labs online find that their students have the knowledge and skills to continue in their degree progression, both majors and non majors. I think, in our survey, 90 percent reported that.

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: And we see this with individual institutions like Bucks County Community College, UCSD Extension Program, where students are having comparable outcomes.

Drumm McNaughton: Okay. That’s really good to know because from an accreditation perspective, the measuring of student learning outcomes is critical. On a general rule, are the costs any different than what a student would pay if they’re doing lab work in the classroom versus online?

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: The cost can be a little bit more expensive than a typical lab fee because we are sending all of the supplies to the students. But what vendors will typically do is work with the school to identify what is that price point. The most important thing is ensuring that this is accessible to students. That they can achieve their learning outcomes and that you’re not pricing a student out of a course. And what these vendors will do is work directly with the faculty to get the right labs, the right combination of hands on and digital, and the right price point, and then work with, bookstores so that students can use financial aid or incorporate that as part of the course fee, so that the students have a little bit more ease of access to adopting the kit.

Drumm McNaughton: That, that makes of sense because obviously if the lab costs for a particular course are two or three times what they would be if you’re taking it in person, that doesn’t work.

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: Exactly.

Drumm McNaughton: This is going to be the fun part. I want to hear stories.

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: Oh my goodness. So I mentioned my student on a submarine. So I have one of our students was deployed in the military, mid semester, he was taking a chemistry course. And like I said, he brought that on the submarine, was able to complete his course, one of my favorite stories that we’ve heard.

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: A second one that always comes to mind is we work with the University of Alaska Fairbanks, And their online programs had historically required students to fly to campus for a portion of the year to complete the labs. Using lab kits allowed them to truly make it a fully online program.

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: But for me, really, the most meaningful stories that I hear are from our students who are doing these kits at home with their families. They have kids, the kids are getting involved, or at least watching mom or dad doing the experiments. And they’re really expanding that love of science beyond just the individual student.

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: It’s having a greater impact to the next generation of students, who hopefully will remember, mom or dad with the fetal pig in the kitchen, and be driven and inspired to pursue a STEM degree or a STEM career.

Drumm McNaughton: Yeah, that’s really neat. You come from an educator background, I do as well, it’s nice to be able to pass that love of science and teaching down to others.

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: Absolutely.

Drumm McNaughton: Yes. So, Caitlin, this has been fascinating for me. Thank you so much.

Three Takeaways for University Presidents and Boards

Three takeaways for university presidents and boards. What should they be thinking about from an online perspective that’s going to help their institution grow, retain more students, et cetera?

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: First thing I think we talked about that demand for online science lab courses is growing. Students are actively seeking these options. And that students will consider leaving a campus or not enrolling at all to find the online options they need. So, building out and facilitating online laboratory options for students is going to be really important.

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: The second thing I like to hone in on is that hands on labs are really essential to maintaining that experience comparable to an on-campus course. Simulations have a place in that lab experience, but it has to have some sort of hands-on element to really get students a comparable outcome to the campus counterpart.

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: And then finally, those online options do have a broader impact, beyond just an individual student. It really drives a love of STEM, for the student, family, friends who might be in the dorm room as they work on it, to really broaden the population who may be interested in pursuing a STEM degree.

Drumm McNaughton: Ah, those are great. Thank you so much. So, what’s next for you? What’s next for Scientific Interactive? You’ve been doing so many great things in the marketplace.

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: Yeah. So right now, we are starting to explore, bringing our materials to the campus. So we have historically worked mostly online, but we have a very large library of digital simulations. And one of the interesting outcomes of the lab report is that, both on campus and online, student preparedness for a lab course is really a significant challenge for instructors.

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: So, we’re just entering the virtual pre lab market, giving students the opportunity to do digital experiments before they get on campus, so they can be familiar with the techniques, and, safety protocols that they’re going to need to implement once they get to lab.

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: Beyond that, we continue to grow the disciplines we offer. We just launched genetics back in July, and we’re starting to move into more allied health related fields, where we’re seeing a lot of growth in pre health sciences students exploring online options.

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: That’s where we’re going next, and I am really excited about it. I’m almost 10 years in, and it’s, it’s a really exciting field to be in.

Drumm McNaughton: Yes, thank you so much. This has been fascinating for me.

Caitlin Runne-Janczy: Thank you. It’s been great to be here.

Drumm McNaughton: Thank you.

Join me next time when we welcome back to the show, Dan Greenstein, former chancellor of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education. Dan just wrapped up his tenure at PASSHE, and he joins me to talk about how the PASSHE team has consolidated six rural universities into two, the process they used and the learnings that they gained through this.

It promises to be a fascinating show.  Thanks for listening. See you next time. 

Changing Higher Ed is a production of The Change Leader. A consultancy committed to transforming higher ed institutions.  Find more information about this topic, along with show notes on this episode at changinghighered.com.

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