An online remedial summer course for new students

CapLicence is a remedial course, which is part of a complete tool that the UPMC (Universite Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris) offers to the new students just after the baccalaureat if they feel that their level may be inadequate during the coming year. It is a distance course with no limit of the number of enrolled students. The issue of raising the number of students passing to second year in the French universities has been a pedagogical problem for a long time. It is now a political question. The French system is characterised by the fact that higher education is only partially taught by the universities. We give the figures for the first year pass rate and for the different postbaccalaureat pathways; they show that the universities are below expectations. The implementation of the tool is based on our experience of distance teaching. The student decides by answering multiple-choice questionnaires the topics that he needs to improve. He finds online or on a CD the pedagogical support on the subjects he chose. Some tutorials on difficult parts of the course are presented on videos. The programme is implemented on SAKAI, the LMS of the university. It means that the students can chat online together and also ask a tutor on the forum. The number of connections per student is good and the feedback of the users is excellent. However from our point of view, the interactions with the tutors or between the students themselves are too weak. Any scientifically founded measurement of the efficiency of the tool is beyond our current capability. But we are able to measure the satisfaction of our students and ask them if they think it helped their insertion in the first year. The answer is very positive. It doesn't mean that the tool cannot evolve.