Peer-to-Peer Monitoring in Pandemic Times: Use of a Web Application to Improve the Academic Performance of Engineering Students at a University in Colombia

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to measure the effect of the Academic Monitoring Service between peers through a web application of the Universidad de la Costa on the academic performance of students. The academic results of 463 students from different engineering programs at the CUC university were analyzed for the periods 2021–1. Prior to the analysis, the permanence and the number of mentoring provided by the peer monitor to the student were taken into account in order to establish two (2) groups. A group with three or fewer mentoring sessions was compared to a group with four or more mentorings at three different times in the 2021–1 semester. For the data analysis, the statistical software SPSS version 22 was used. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was applied to determine if the data came from a normal distribution and the two groups were compared in each moment of the semester using Mann-Whitney U, which showed that for the first and second evaluation moments there were no significant differences between the groups; however, for the third evaluation moment, there were statistically significant differences with a p-value < 0.05. Findings suggest that the continuity and intensity of assistance in monitoring through the web application have a positive impact on the academic performance of students.