Abstract

FERNANDEZ MARTIN, Francisco D.; ARCO TIRADO, José L.; LOPEZ ORTEGA, Sagrario  and  HEILBORN DIAZ, Verónica A.. University academic failure prevention by peer tutoring. rev.latinoam.psicol. [online]. 2011, vol.43, n.1, pp.59-71. ISSN 0120-0534.

This research sought to determine the impact of a peertutoring program on diminishing or preventing academic failure at the University of Granada, with a sample of first year students drawn from Engineering, Pharmacy, Economics and Chemical Engineering (N = 100). After selecting and constructing the necessary instruments to gather all demographic and academic relevant information from the sample, and assigning randomly the students to either the experimental or control group, the intervention consisted of a series of tutoring sessions highly structured with freshman students delivered by last year students and doctorate students previously trained to act as tutors. The data obtained from parametric and non-parametric tests shows statistically significant differences in favour of the experimental group on such variables as learning strategies, as well as size effects on average score by grade points average, performance rate and success rate at the end of the intervention, and at the end of the academic year, including also better dropout rate. Therefore, this intervention has contributed to increase student's performance and their learning processes, as well as to improve the efficacy, efficiency and utility of those Higher Education's careers intervened.

Keywords : peer-tutoring; university; academic failure; academic performance; learning strategies.

        · abstract in Spanish     · text in Spanish     · Spanish ( pdf )