A five-year study of the factors affecting the passing rates of first-semester organic chemistry students at a public university in California is reported. Student attitudes, perceptions, and attributes were examined at the beginning of the course (N = 234) and at the end of the course (N = 161). There is a definite correlation of increased study time and student expectations with passing rate. One counterintuitive result is that there appears to be no correlation between the amount of time since the last college-level chemistry course was taken and the passing rate. In addition, another result hints that for the subgroups in this study, there seems to be no affect on the passing rate for students having one versus two semesters of general chemistry preparation. These two results may imply that, at least for the group of students in this study, the exact content preparation of students may not play as large a role in determining the passing rate in first-semester organic chemistry as other student attributes, such as study skills and motivation.
Paul G. Jasien (Thu,) studied this question.