Can Peer Mentoring Improve Online Teaching? An RCT During the Corona Pandemic

Last registered on March 18, 2022

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Can Peer Mentoring Improve Online Teaching? An RCT During the Corona Pandemic
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0005868
Initial registration date
May 19, 2020

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
May 19, 2020, 2:02 PM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Last updated
March 18, 2022, 5:00 AM EDT

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

Locations

Region

Primary Investigator

Affiliation
University of Erlangen-Nuremberg

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Affiliation
University of Erlangen-Nuremberg
PI Affiliation
University of Erlangen-Nuremberg

Additional Trial Information

Status
Completed
Start date
2020-05-04
End date
2020-12-31
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
We study a cohort of students at the School of Business, Economics, and Society at a German university in their second semester which is entirely held online due to the COVID-pandemic. We design and implement a program that provides students with a student advisor from a more advanced semester. The mentors and mentees meet one-on-one online and work on a plan for the semester, discuss issues in working from home or studying generally, and the mentors provide suggestions on how to study effectively. To determine whether and how students respond to the intervention, we measure the mentees' performance in exams.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Hardt, David, Markus Nagler and Johannes Rincke. 2022. "Can Peer Mentoring Improve Online Teaching? An RCT During the Corona Pandemic." AEA RCT Registry. March 18. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.5868-2.0
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
The study program Economics and Business Studies at the university where the trial is going to be implemented requires students to collect 180 credit points to graduate. Students are expected to graduate after three years (six semesters). The study plan assigns courses worth 30 credit points to each semester. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, in the summer term 2020 all courses of the School of Business, Economics, and Society will be conducted in online format. The trial focuses on the second semester consisting of six compulsory courses. We recruited 15 advisors who are themselves students in the Economics and Business Studies program at the School of Business, Economics, and Society. We hired students as advisors who successfully completed the first year of studies and during the current semester are enrolled in the fourth semester of the program.

In the first week of the semester, students in the treatment group are informed via email about the launch of a new mentoring program designed specifically for students in the second semester of the study program. They are invited to register for the program through a webpage. The mentoring program focuses on self-organization and is supposed to make mentees aware of potential problems and pitfalls of studying online. We designed the mentoring program to involve five one-on-one online meetings between advisors and mentees. Each meeting is supposed to last between 30 and 45 minutes. For each of the meetings, we provide advisors with structured information on how to conduct the session. In the control group, there is no mentoring. However, the School of Business, Economics, and Society provides general information on the topics that we focus on in the mentoring for all students through its website. This includes advice on how to work from home and general information on all issues regarding the online implementation of courses.

After the end of the exam period (preliminarily scheduled for July and August 2020), we will collect individual data on exam performance to contruct our outcomes.
Intervention Start Date
2020-05-04
Intervention End Date
2020-07-25

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
credit points earned in the second term
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
See Pre-Analysis Plan.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
See Pre-Analysis Plan.
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)
See Pre-Analysis Plan.

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
Half of the students in the second term are invited to take part in the mentoring program. For details on the program, see entry "Intervention".
Experimental Design Details
See Pre-Analysis Plan.
Randomization Method
Randomization done in office by a computer
Randomization Unit
Individual student
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
694 students
Sample size: planned number of observations
694 students
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
347 students
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
See Pre-Analysis Plan
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Ethics Commission of the School of Business, Economics and Society, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg
IRB Approval Date
2020-03-08
IRB Approval Number
N/A
Analysis Plan

Analysis Plan Documents

Pre-Analysis Plan

MD5: a63129502f5d5629f94ae3a64d1f4b75

SHA1: fe00f0b481227d2ce07764e0ed768222cbe5c078

Uploaded At: May 18, 2020

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
Yes
Intervention Completion Date
August 31, 2020, 12:00 +00:00
Data Collection Complete
Yes
Data Collection Completion Date
November 30, 2020, 12:00 +00:00
Final Sample Size: Number of Clusters (Unit of Randomization)
691 students
Was attrition correlated with treatment status?
No
Final Sample Size: Total Number of Observations
691 students
Final Sample Size (or Number of Clusters) by Treatment Arms
347 in control, 344 in treatment
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials