AUTHOR=Queiruga-Dios Marián , Perez-Araujo Alvaro , de Ávila-Arias Carmen Romero , Queiruga-Dios Araceli 

TITLE=Improvement of individual learning with mentoring programs for first-year undergraduate students

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=Volume 14 - 2023

YEAR=2023

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1046999

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1046999

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=This study presents a brief analysis of Spanish universities that promote mentoring programs with students. These mentoring programs are divided into different categories depending on the persons (faculty or students) involved in the process, and its characteristics (for novice, seniors or foreign students). The case of the Universidad Francisco de Vitoria is presented, where freshmen students from all undergraduate degrees are involved in an annual course where the core part is related to formal mentoring activities. This study analyses undergraduate degree students’ outcomes and results from ten different degrees for a period of four academic years (from 2016-2017 to 2019-2020). This first analysis corresponds to students’ activities and marks, awarded on the assessment of the assigned mentoring tasks related to the competences of critical thinking, proactivity, personal knowledge (with the objective of acceptance and improvement), and the ability to ask transcendental questions. Then, a reliable and valid survey, conducted every year to all senior students, was used to get feedback from students. Thus, after a quantitative and qualitative analysis of students’ results, it was noticed that they become more confident in their studies when they engage in mentoring-based courses and sessions and this benefits their lives. All these information led to the improvement of the mentoring process.