Helping freshmen to succeed: a web system to encourage timely study

A big, common problem in the Italian universities, namely the students low success rate and the delay in obtaining the bachelor degree, can be at least partially traced in a bad habit freshmen inherit form the high school: the idea that studying is necessary only shortly before the (written or oral) evaluations. We tried to attack this attitude by promoting regular study during the course instead of at its end. We achieve that via a methodology heavily based on the notion of peer work, and implemented in a web system, which we make freely available. In this paper we discuss the idea, the implantation and the results.