Percepciones del impacto y la eficacia de la acción tutorial en cuatro universidades públicas chilenas

Resumen

This research has its genesis in the observation and participation of the researcher in the personal, academic and professional environments of the students in his home university, Universidad de Tarapacá, as well as in his professional motivation to contribute to the Chilean educational system. However, we can say that the orientation and tutorial action has to be improved and organized in such a way that it produces a more adequate impact on the retention of the students, and that it contributes to improve the quality of education. It can also be highlighted that the guidance and tutorial action carried out by the different actors involved -academics and peer tutors of the University of Tarapacá, in addition to the researcher of this thesis- have been fundamental in the academic performance and motivation within the careers studied. However, being such the relevance of the tutorial actions, there is little research on the process that students go through when entering the university for the first time, including the university’s own actions to support them. In this sense, the purpose of the study is to analyze the perception of the impact and effectiveness of tutorial actions implemented in Chilean public universities. The methodology used consists of the application of a questionnaire to a sample of 541 participants from four Chilean public universities. The results show a favorable perception regarding the implementation of the tutorial actions in all the participants of the different universities. In addition, significant differences were found among the participating students with respect to the perception of the implementation of the tutorial actions, according to the different execution processes developed in each university. These results show the importance of evaluating the effectiveness of the tutorial action processes and orienting new implementation modalities, which allow a better academic performance of the students in their university trajectory. For this research, a parallel convergent mixed study was carried out, with the application of a questionnaire which was validated by experts and which presents adequate psychometric properties, clarity of its items and an appropriate internal consistency in each of the dimensions with reliability indexes ranging between 0, 785 and 0.907, a Cronbach’s α -internal consistency- of 0.978 for the total scale, in the qualitative part, a documentary analysis, in-depth interviews and focus group, which were also subjected to a pilot data collection techniques. On the other hand, the development of this research has made it possible to confirm that the competencies - for example, the soft skills or attitudinal skills - to be developed by students who successfully graduate and enter the world of work, also require improvement with the timely contributions that guidance and tutorial action imply in this period of completion of the Higher Education cycle. In conclusion, the importance of this study lies in the fact that it partially covers a gap in knowledge, and it does so by incorporating the viewpoint of three of the main actors involved in the process of tutorial actions: academics, tutors and tutored students, constituting a first approximation at national and regional level to analyze the perception of the impact and effectiveness of tutorial actions, and it also seeks to be a contribution to the problem of dropout, desertion and backwardness of students entering higher education, both at national and international regional level.