THE TRANSITION FROM SECONDARY EDUCATION TO THE UNIVERSITY. THE DEGREE OF CHEMISTRY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BARCELONA

The transition from secondary education to the University is a key process in the initial academic progression of the undergraduate students. Compared to the previous stage, the university studies pose to the new students a higher demand in terms of dedication, autonomous study, depth of comprehension of theories and concepts, reasoning capacity and strategies for solving problems. When this demand is not appropriately addressed by the student, the academic progression will be negatively affected.

The problems associated with an inadequate adaptation to the University standards can usually be detected during the first weeks of the first semester. An early detection of these problems at the beginning of the first semester, together with appropriate learning and teaching methodologies can speed up the adaptation of the new students to the university standards of demand, thus preventing a slowdown in their academic progression.

In this communication we present a survey of the study habits and difficulties that the students of the course Fundamentals of Chemistry 1 (FC1), corresponding to the first semester of the degree in Chemistry, have expressed through two opinion polls (one at the beginning and the other one at the end of the first semester). The opinions expressed in these two polls have been correlated with the grades that the students obtained in two exams: the Chemistry exam of the University Access Test (previous to the admission to the university) and the final exam of FC1 (at the end of the first semester of undergraduate studies). Univariate and multivariate data analysis are used with this purpose. The results show that motivation towards the study of FC1 has increased during the semester for 56% of the students, and has remained unchanged for 22% of the students. However, 46% of the students didn’t succeed in the final exam of FC1, and the mean grade in this exam was approximately 2 points (over 10) lower than in the Chemistry exam of the University Access Test. Those students that expressed regular attendance to the lectures, high participation in the discussions and regular (up to date) study obtained better performance at the end of the semester.