Evaluation of the Chemistry Knowledge of Students Entering the ETH Zurich with a Moodle Quiz

Abstract

The basic chemistry knowledge of first-year students in the disciplines Chemistry, Biology, Pharmaceutical Sciences, and Health Sciences and Technology has been evaluated within the first three weeks of the Fall semester with a Moodle-based quiz at ETH Zurich. It consists of 37 small problems testing the knowledge that ETH students entering the lecture courses General Chemistry 1 (Inorganic Chemistry) (AC1) and Organic Chemistry 1 (OC1) should ideally have. An initial set of questions was developed by Bernhard Jaun (ETH Zurich) in 2007, it was combined with questions from an evaluation created in 2015 by Markus Müller (secondary school II teacher). The results of a total of 925 students who took part in the 2016 and 2017 evaluations are presented. It was found that 80% of the students of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Interdisciplinary Natural Sciences (AC1 course) and 70% of the students of Biology, Pharmaceutical Sciences, and Health Sciences and Technology (OC1 course) scored ?60%. Students who took the focus course (Schwerpunktfach) Biology and Chemistry at the SEK II level (Swiss school system) performed on average 13–18% better and with a smaller standard deviation than other students. No significant differences were observed with regard to gender or the region in which the qualification for university entrance was obtained.