(190h) To Pre-Req or Not? Students’ Explanations for Why They Choose to Enroll (or not) in Chemical Engineering Courses

Most STEM curricula include prerequisite courses which must be completed prior to enrolling in future courses. Prerequisite courses may exist in order to help prepare students for more advanced coursework or to help control course sizes. While courses may be listed as a prerequisite, sometimes courses are listed as prerequisites or corequisites, which gives students the freedom to choose when to take the course in question. Reasons for why students may choose to enroll in a course as a prerequisite or a corequisite have been explored with biology students but to the best of our knowledge this has not been done with engineering students. The goal of this study was to therefore investigate the reasons why engineering students choose to take courses as prerequisites or corequisites and also their perceptions of prerequisite courses in general. Chemical engineering students (n = 162) enrolled in a sophomore level material and energy balances course (MEB) were surveyed about their experience with an introductory thermodynamics course (Thermo), which could be enrolled in as a prerequisite to MEB or as a corequisite with MEB. Students who enrolled in Thermo as a prerequisite (88% of the population) did so primarily because the chemical engineering degree program listed it in the semester before MEB (38% of survey responses) or because it fit well into their schedule (38%), while only a small fraction mentioned the academic value from taking Thermo before MEB (17%). Students who enrolled in Thermo as a corequisite with MEB (12% of the population) did so primarily because of scheduling issues that prevented them from taking it as a prerequisite (59%). Students also perceived that enrolling in Thermo as a prerequisite would correlate with higher grades in MEB compared to students who took Thermo and MEB as corequisites. An analysis of pass/fail/withdraw rates supported this notion as a significantly higher number of students passed MEB when taking Thermo as a prerequisite compared to students taking Thermo and MEB as corequisites. These results suggest that students enroll in courses for different reasons and that we as advisors can provide guidance to help students make decisions about when to take courses as this may impact course performance and retention.