Abstract: In a typical course an instructor is not able to assess the abilities of his students until after one or two exams have been given. By then 40% of the semester has passed and a student doing poorly will have a difficult time catching up. This will cause angst for the student who may have to repeat the course. If ACT scores can be used to determine which students are “at risk”, the instructor would know at the beginning of the semester which students may need more intensive help. Ideally, this would make for better exam scores and better performances on the ACS final exam. This poster will document the results of research done with University of Findlay organic chemistry students in fall semester 2016. The goal is to compare their chemistry pretest scores (taken as pre freshmen) with their final percentage in the class. The pre test data will be graphed against the student’s final percentage and the linear correlation of the data will be determined. Most of these students are in a pre-veterinary medicine or pharmacy program. These programs are very competitive and the “at risk” students would greatly benefit from extra help if the instructor knew they needed it at the beginning of the course. We will see if the students who score best on the chemistry pretest do the best in organic chemistry. On the contrary, one could argue that an exam taken during summer registration isn’t really taken seriously by students. In that case the data would be more random. We will see which it is.

Does a better chemistry pre-test score mean a better grade in organic chemistry?

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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