Metacognitive Studying Strategies and Student Success in General Chemistry

Abstract

The aim of this project is to determine whether a presentation on metacognitive strategies for studying has led to an improvement in the performance of students taking General Chemistry I. Over the last several years, several professors in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Central Oklahoma have given such a presentation to their students after having completed the first exam of the semester. At the end of the semester, the students take a standardized final exam written by the American Chemical Society (ACS), which we use to gauge student success. Records were kept of whether students received the presentation, their respective ACS final exam scores, as well as other relevant demographic information, and this information was used to create the dataset for this project. In order to determine if the presentation was impactful and has indeed improved student performance, we created several regression models to determine which variables are significant in predicting each student’s ACS percentile rank. We expect to find that while there may be some correlation between a student’s performance and his or her exposure to the presentation, there are several factors that are affecting each student’s performance in the course. Our statistical models and results will assist the faculty of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Central Oklahoma in determining the next step in improving students’ performance in General Chemistry I.