Abstract

The present research evaluates the use of cognitive strategies in university students with the aim of establishing the cognitive profile of freshmen civil engineering students in Universidad del Bío Bío, Concepción, Chile, as a function of their learning strategies and scientific reasoning. It’s expected to obtain a way to classify students depending on the type of learning they show once entering university, and determine a model to predict academic success. This model would allow us analyze the conditions which characterized students who succeed and failed in the subject physics I at the end of the semester. Finally, it’s expected deliver recommendations and advices to create new intervention programs for developing the acceptable learning strategies in order to build meaningful learnings and achieve academic success. The results show that a high percentage of freshmen students present conditions for: 1. Mechanical Learning (MchL) and concrete reasoning; and 2. Strategic Learning (SL) and pre-formal reasoning, thus low probabilities for achieving academic success. In consequence, only a low percentage of students show conditions for Meaningful Learning (ML) and formal reasoning, and therefore, reach god scores in physics I.