We aim to understand how participation and engagement in Student-Led Tutorials (SLTs)—where students discuss and teach their peers—impact their subject mastery and overall course performance.
Project Summary
In higher education, the paradigm has been shifting from a focus on teaching to a focus on the learner and learning. Several meta-analyses have shown that students’ active engagement in the course leads to higher grades and lower failure rates, especially for traditionally disadvantaged students (Freeman et al., 2014; Theobald et al., 2020). At EPFL, the new curricular reform project is putting the focus on deep learning.
One pedagogical strategy for enhancing student engagement and focusing on deeper learning is Student-Led Tutorials (SLTs). During SLTs, students lead the tutorials, meaning they prepare and teach their peers during a tutorial session. Students choose the questions they will address in the classroom from a list that has been provided by the teaching team. Variations of SLTs have been successfully implemented in multiple higher education fields (Hayton, 2019; Keenan, 2014), including medicine (Arora & Hashilkar, 2016; Kassab et al., 2005) and engineering (Dosoftei & Alexa, 2024; Edström, 2017; Jahnke & Lindgren, 2021; Kadhum et al., 2015; Serra et al., 2023; Vertegaal et al., 2025).
SLTs have been shown to be associated with increases in students’ academic performance (Arora & Hashilkar, 2016; Dosoftei & Alexa, 2024; Edström, 2017; Kadhum et al., 2015; Serra et al., 2023; Vertegaal et al., 2025) and transversal skill development (Dosoftei & Alexa, 2024), and with decreases in the dropout rate (Edström, 2017). Students who have engaged with SLTs have positive opinions about the method (Arora & Hashilkar, 2016; Dosoftei & Alexa, 2024; Edström, 2017; Serra et al., 2023) and its influence on their learning (Arora & Hashilkar, 2016; Dosoftei & Alexa, 2024; Edström, 2017; Hayton, 2019) and emotions (for example, stress) (Dosoftei & Alexa, 2024). Serra et al. (2023) have also demonstrated a direct correlation between students’ participation in SLTs and their academic performance.
Building from these studies and considering EPFL’s curricular reform project that seeks to focus on deep learning, we are interested in understanding how participation and engagement in SLTs at EPFL influences student performance.
Contacts
- Joelyn de Lima
- Anja Kranjc Horvat
- Iris Capdevila