Resumen de Study on student´s previous background, interest, insight, preferences and success rate in the subject chemistry in several engineering degrees
J. Albiol Chiva, J. Peris Vicente, Maria Jose Ruiz Angel, M. Esteve Amorós, P. Esteve Amorós, E. Esteve Amorós, Diego Enrique Kassuha, Samuel Carda-Broch, J. Esteve Romero
The degree of Engineering Chemistry is taught at the Universitat Jaume I such as Chemical, Industrial and Electrical Technologies. Usually, students of Engineering didn´t take any previous course on secondary school before start Chemistry at university, so they have difficulties to understand basic knowledge about acid-base equilibria, complexation, solubility or redox reaction, furthermore of inorganic, organic and physical chemistry. The matters that introduce these concepts is the General and Advanced Chemistry, that includes the calculus of concentrations and the applications on industry. In this work we asked to the students (n=75) about the previous knowledge, interest in different parts of chemistry, possible applications, number of hours devoted to study, burden considered by the students and requirements of students about chemistry issues. Finally, our group correlated the responses with the final score obtained for the students. All the data were acquired anonymously and provided in a voluntary test by the students. Results indicate that, first, only 38% of the students have previous studies about chemistry. Second, main issues considered by students in engineering chemistry are redox and acid-base equilibria and its applications, with 69 and 55% respectively. Third, the number of hours devoted to the chemistry matter is 98±12 hours per subject. As conclusion, more chemistry studies are required in secondary and degree engineering, taking in consideration engineering student’s claims. When they had previous knowledge about chemistry better score were obtained in tests. Difference could be arranged in two points: students with and without previous chemistry studies.
