Abstract

The increasing enrollment in higher education in Chile demands an institutional adaptation to the new learning characteristics of its students. This has challenged tertiary programs to renew their curricula, incorporate innovative teaching and learning strategies, and to evaluate the effectiveness of these new pedagogical proposals considering the characteristics of the new students. One of these strategies that adjust to these demands corresponds to peer learning supported by undergraduate learning assistants. This research aims at measuring the impact of the incorporation of an undergraduate learning assistant in a Philosophy course in the Law program at UC Temuco. To reach this goal, this course was divided into two sections taught by the same instructor, using the same teaching methods and evaluation. The only difference corresponds to the assistant’s presence in one of the sections, whose role was to provide feedback in different learning activities. There were significant differences in grades between the experimental and control groups, which evidences the advantages of incorporating an assistant’s support in these types of courses.