Summary of dissertation project Longitudinal study of academic success in chemistry

Chemistry as a degree programme is notable for its high student dropout rate, which is currently around 45 % (Heublein et al., 2018). For this reason, knowledge about predictors of academic success in the subject of chemistry is becoming increasingly relevant. For the first time, the ALSTER research group investigated affective, motivational and subject-specific personal and study success variables of two cohorts for the different sub-fields of chemistry within the first two subject semesters (e.g., prior knowledge and subject knowledge of general, physical, analytical, inorganic and organic chemistry; BIG 5, propensity to drop out and exam performance, Averbeck et al., 2017). The continuing, longitudinally collected data of these cohorts will be analysed in the follow-up project of the ALSTER research network to deepen the knowledge of subject-specific predictors and their development and expression over the first six semesters. The goal is to further differentiate the framework model developed thus far in order to be able to select students appropriately and support them at an early stage, and to purposefully reduce the dropout rate in chemistry.