Active learning and the development of 21st century skills in online STEM education – a large scale survey

While the benefits of active learning to student experiences are well documented, less is known about active learning in online education, especially with regard to the development of 21st century skills. Here we address this gap in the context of online Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) higher education. 744 undergraduate students participated in a survey during the Spring 2020 term. The survey asked about learning design, perceived development of 21st-century skills, and overall satisfaction with the course. We extracted the relationship between various properties of course design (such as frequency of groupwork) and the self-reported development of key 21st-century skills. Results corroborated earlier findings, showing that these skills can be grouped into three sets: communication and collaboration skills, domain-general skills, and STEM-specific skills. We further found that designs for active learning explain students’ development of 21st century skills. In particular, it was individual work, group work, long-term work, and synchronous work that explain variance in students' reports of skill development. Moreover, supporting students in the development of their 21st-century skills was associated with greater overall satisfaction with the course. Our findings suggest that activities in the higher levels of the Interactive, Constructive, Active, and Passive framework (ICAP; Chi et al., 2018) are associated with greater learning of key 21st-century skills and increase students’ overall satisfaction. We discuss implications for design and institutional support.