Complexity of the Academic System: Retention and Dropout

The Italian education system is made up of subsystems that should interact with each other to ensure the student's learning and success. Sometimes something does not work, and once compulsory schooling is over, a phenomenon often arises, especially widespread in Italy: school dispersion or dropout. There is evidence of a blockage in the transitions between the various school orders. This difficulty becomes more evident in the period of transition from high school to university, the student finds himself in a system with different characteristics from the previous systems, so that he finds the academic system and manifests discomfort in learning and studying, even to the point of abandoning the path, without obtaining a degree. This system required the student to have a high level of self-regulation. The online laboratory that we have created helps the student acquire greater self-regulation during the first year of university. In this paper, we show a text analysis of the student's thoughts on what he/she experienced.