Resumen de Predicting Students at Risk in General Chemistry Using Pre-semester Assessments and Demographic Information
Eugene P. Wagner, Howell Sasser, Warren J. DiBiase
Predicting student performance in the classroom is an important area of educational research owing to its potential for helping educators identify students who may have difficulty grasping the material in a course. The goal of this research was to develop a sensitive and specific pre-semester assessment for students enrolled in general chemistry for science majors that would identify students at risk for failing the course. The student pre-semester assessment (SPSA) predicted 40.8% of the students who went on to fail first-semester general chemistry. It was a better predictor of at-risk students than the Toledo exam (27.7%), SAT (16.8%), or predicted grade point index (PGI) (29.4%). The inclusion of demographic variables did little to increase the SPSA's predictive power, but math and chemistry background and age significantly increased the accuracy of predicting at-risk students when combined with either the SAT score or the PGI.
