Effectiveness of a pilot program for the improvement of academic performance of undergraduate students at the University of Chile

The purpose of this research was to determine the effectiveness of a pilot program for the improvement of academic performance of failing undergraduate students from the School of Chemical Science and Pharmacy at the University of Chile, who were studying subjects that were considered to be critical, i.e. General Chemistry I and II, Physics II, and Mathematics I and II, of the Chemistry, Chemistry and Pharmacy, Food and Biochemistry Engineering BA programs. For this purpose, a pre-test/post-test quasi-experimental design was used, with a non-equivalent control group. The sample was constituted by 154 students, divided into 4 groups: G1 (n=29) was the one that received the whole program; G2 (n=18) was the one that only received psychological support; G3 (n=61) was the group that exclusively received academic tutoring in the critical subjects; and finally G4 (n=46), the control group that did not received any type of support. The obtained results show that the program produced a significant improvement of the academic performance of the students, which was reflected in the passing grades of previously failed subjects in comparison to the ones obtained by the control group. This evidence is highly robust, especially in the case of the group of students that participated in the academic tutoring (G3), as well as those that complemented such tutoring with psychological support (G1).