The impact of service-learning and peer-tutoring programmes to improve the effectiveness of Higher Education

INTRODUCTION. The purpose of this study was to measure the impact of a service-learning and peer-tutoring programmes on the academic performance of freshmen and also to explore its effects on senior student's competences (social skills and learning strategies and motivation). METHOD. The total sample was composed by 71 students with 48 from first year (tutees) and 23 from last year (tutors). Academic performance was measured by the academic record and social skills were measured with the Social Skills Scale (Gismero, 2002), while learning strategies and motivation were measured by Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (Pintrich, Smith, Garcia & McKeachie, 1991). First, the intervention consisted of a training course for tutors aimed at providing them with the skills necessary to perform their role effectively. And second, to deliver 20 individual tutoring sessions highly structured to first year students. RESULTS. The results after comparing the experimental and control groups of freshmen students , reveal statistically significant differences in favor of the experimental group in their academic performance, while the results obtained in the pre-test-post-test comparisons for the tutor students show significant results in some of the subscales. DISCUSSION. Our results suggest that participation in the programme has had a positive and statistically significant effect on the academic performance of freshmen students , as well as on self-regulation learning levels and social skills of students acting under the role of tutor.