Math‐Up Skills Test (MUST): As a Predictor of Success in General Chemistry

Abstract

General Chemistry is known as a gateway course to many STEM careers. Some of these careers include nursing, technology, and engineering. However, General Chemistry is also known as a high‐risk course where thirty percent of students taking it will be unsuccessful. Unsuccessful is defined as a grade of D, F, or W (withdrawal). Recent educational trends have shown that number‐sense decline is causing students to become reliant on calculators. Students are unable to do basic math without the use of an electronic calculator. As such, thirty to sixty percent of college students require remedial coursework in both math and science.The MUST test, or the Math‐Up Skills Test, has been developed to test math skills in topics that are taught in algebra courses and below. Some of the math skills include multiplying numbers in a scientific notation form, and conversions from a fraction to a decimal. The MUST Test has been distributed to participating General Chemistry I and II faculty members throughout different universities in Texas. For data collection, students must fill out an IRB form stating that they will give their consent for using their scores and demographics for research purposes. On different days in the semester, the MUST test is done twice: Once without the calculator, and once with a calculator. The presence of a calculator does not make a statistical difference with the scores of the student taking the MUST. Using multiple statistical tests, the MUST test scores are correlated with student success in General Chemistry I and II. The MUST correlations were divided into following different categories: Gender, classification, and institution.This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2018 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.