Abstract:

The student dropout in higher education has a negative impact on the individual and society's progress. Conversely, enhancing student retention fosters personal advancement and yields substantial societal advantages, encompassing aspects such as augmented tax revenues, elevated income levels, diminished crime rates, and refined consumer decision-making processes. Therefore, higher education institutions must develop solutions for increasing the retention and decreasing dropout of the students.
The European academic dropout rate in young students aged between 18 and 24 was approximately 9.6% in 2022. Although in Portugal, this rate is significantly lower (6%), at the University Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro (UTAD), between 2017 and 2021, the academic dropout rate was 8.6%. In order to mitigate this high dropout rate, UTAD has been implementing the Tutoring|Mentoring Programme.
Following the implementation of this Tutoring|Mentoring Programme, the need to digitize the process became evident. Until then, all operational and administrative interactions of the Programme, such as assigning tutors and mentors to new students, scheduling meetings and sending notifications, were carried out through fragmented and non-integrated procedures, including using paper, e-mails, and SMS messages. Such a method causes operational inefficiencies and impedes the effective centralization and organization of data within a single system.
In response to the identified challenges, this research proposes a digital tutoring and mentoring platform. The platform centralizes all mentoring-related activities, enabling efficient allocation of tutors and mentors, seamless scheduling of meetings, and prompt notification dispatch. The platform also allows for real-time tracking of students' academic progress and enable proactive intervention strategies.
A mixed-methods approach was adopted to evaluate the digital tutoring and mentoring platform. Quantitative and qualitative data was collected through a questionnaire applied at a workshop held with experts in tutoring and mentoring in higher education. The digital tutoring and mentoring platform were presented during the workshop, and the experts were invited to use the platform. After the experts have used the platform, the questionnaire was made accessible to collect feedback on the platform and recommendations for platform improvement. The main contributions made through the evaluation include: (1) integrating the platform with other university systems where key performance indicators are presented, such as retention rate, academic performance and user satisfaction; (2) implementing artificial intelligence algorithms for identifying and signalling possible cases of academic dropout early on; (3) and developing a feature on the platform where continuous feedback can be given, allowing users to provide suggestions and report problems in real-time. These recommendations will be implemented in future work for further evaluation, now with end users. From the results of this research, student retention in higher education is expected to be increased.

Keywords:

higher education, tutoring, mentoring, student dropout, student retention, student support system.