Tutoring in (Online) Higher Education: Experimental Evidence

Demand for personalized online tutoring in higher education is growing but there is little research on its effectiveness. We conducted an RCT offering remote peer tutoring in microand macroeconomics at a German university teaching online due to the Covid-pandemic. Treated students met in small groups, in alternating weeks with and without a more senior student tutor. The treatment improved study behavior and increased contact to other students. Tutored students achieved around 30% more credits and a one grade level better GPA across treated subjects. Our findings suggest that the program reduced outcome inequality. We find no impacts on mental health. *This field experiment was pre-registered at the AEA Social Science Registry under the ID 7686 and got IRB approval at the university where the experiment took place. We thank seminar participants at the University of Innsbruck as well as conference participants the Berlin Network for Labor Market Research Workshop at DIW for helpful comments. We are grateful to Veronika Grimm, Christian Merkl, and Claus Schnabel for their support of this project. We thank Jens Gemmel for excellent research assistance. We thank Paolo Bontempo, Jonas Hupp, Laura Klebl, Lukas Kleinlein, Bastian Lerzer, Martin Löffler, Yordan Medarov, Anna-Sophie Nicklas, Annina Pohl, Tobias Reiser, Alexandra Stahl, Jonas Urbanik, Theresa Weist, Ann-Sophie Wilker, and Anna Zinner for their excellent work as student tutors. Nagler gratefully acknowledges funding by the Joachim Herz Foundation through an Add-On Fellowship. †University of Erlangen-Nuremberg; david.hardt@fau.de ‡University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, CESifo, and LASER; markus.nagler@fau.de §Corresponding author; University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and CESifo; johannes.rincke@fau.de