EVALUATION OF EXISTING INTERVENTION INITIATIVES FOR HELPING AT RISK FIRST-YEAR SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ŽILINA

Over the last few decades the University of Žilina faces the pivotal challenge of retaining qualified students who would be interested in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) study programmes. However, a substantial number of first-year science and engineering students do have a problem during their transition from secondary school to university and the drop-out rate at the University of Žilina [UNIZA] is increasing. Therefore, together with five other European universities, Aalto University [Finland], University of Birmingham [UK], Budapest Institute of Economics and Technology [Hungary - BME], Katholieke University Leuven [Belgium – KU Leuven], Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg [Germany – TUHH], we put paramount focus on understanding the factors related to study success of first-year engineering students via fulfilling the goals of readySTEMgo project.

The main objective of the readySTEMgo project is threefold:
(1) Identifying the key competencies that are required for a successful educational STEM career;
(2) constructing an instrument inventory for measuring these competencies; and
(3) identifying at risk students and evaluating existing intervention initiatives for helping at risk students (preferably before the start of the academic year).

To date, there is ample research on the predictive power of students’ prior grades and domain-specific knowledge on their achievement in the first year and results show that high grades obtain during their secondary studies are a necessary but not sufficient condition to be successful in the first year. However, the prediction of students’ future performance is not a task that should be taken lightly. There are a large number of factors that should be taken into account. In this paper we would like to deal with possible reasons why Slovak secondary students lose their interest in STEM study programmes, why their prior knowledge of physics before they enrol at university is insufficient and then we shift the focus to the evaluation of existing intervention initiatives for helping first-year Science and Engineering students at the University of Žilina with an increased propensity of dropping out in an early stage of the chosen STEM programme by focusing on their academic readiness.