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http://dx.doi.org/10.20396/bjos.v17i0.8652940
Volume 17
2018
e18887
Original Article
¹ School of Dentistry, São Paulo
State University “Júlio de Mesquita
Filho”/Brazil
² School of Engineering, Federal
Technological University of Paraná/
Brazil
3 Faculty of Science an d Technology,
São Paulo State University “Júlio de
Mesquita Filho”/Brazil
4 School of Dentistry, Guarulhos
University/Brazil
Correpondence to:
Gabriel Pereira Nunes
School of Dentistry, São Paulo State
University “Júlio de Mesquita Filho”/
Brazil.
gabriel.pereira.nunes@hotmail.com
Received: April 11, 2018
Accepted: May 30, 2018
The importance of student
monitoring in academic
learning: a two-year
follow-up
Gabriel Pereira Nunes¹, Beatriz Ommati Pirovani¹,
Hiago Guimarães Silva², Ana Victória Butarelo¹,
Juliana da Silva Rossini¹, Jefferson Martins Costa³,
Larissa Pereira Nunes4, Karina Vieira Martins³
Abstract: Monitory exercises must provide conditions that
support academic and personal development for students
during graduation, once it allows a leveling possibility whereas
the monitor meets the demands from the students in earlier
years. Aim: This study has as objective to analyze the
importance of monitory in advantage of the best academic
achievement in students. Methods: In the years of 2015 and
2016, sophomore odontology students were monitored on
pharmacology, originated from the need of remedial studies
due to its high incidence of failure. For such, weekly monitoring
on theoretical classes, study groups and content reviews were
done. After two years of monitoring the number of failures
and respective percentages were determined. The data was
submitted to variance analysis and Student-Newman-Keuls
test (p< 0,001). Results: The monitory had expressive results,
since it reduced signicantly failure numbers, statistically much
inferior than previous years. Conclusion: Hence, it was possible
to verify that monitory had positive effects on students learning,
allowing access to knowledge and being imperative to the
covered content systematization on the subject, since advising
and monitoring students made their learning more natural.
Keywords: Student monitoring. Learning. Pharmacology.
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Nunes et al.
Introduction
Academic monitoring is characterized as a program to foster education, arising from the
need and importance of contributing to the advance of the monitor’s academic knowl-
edge, as well as providing a leveling possibility whereas the monitor meets the demands
of the students in earlier years. It is a necessary opportunity for the enrolled student to
prepare itself for learning activities. Even as a serious experience to break down opin-
ions of limited mind about the global universe implicating learning and teaching, for
through it some doubts are claried, both in the students learning scope and on the edu-
cational scope, serving as base to build the educator’s identity of the student-monitor.
Besides the monitor’s academic and personal development, these activities have
served as support to curricular subjects study and, thereafter advise the student to
acquire greater knowledge, seeking information and success while fullling the pro-
gram content of such subjects. Given that some subjects have a continuously high
level of failure, monitory also has the function to help students to acquire study skill,
support with regard to their diculties. This situation is reinforced by Ferreira by men-
tioning that “uniting knowledge makes us wiser and more productive. It is necessary
to discover new perspectives, dividing and adding up to each other”3.
Variables of many dimensions can hinder learning during childhood and adolescence.
However such issue is also customary in higher education. Learning diculties may
be due to cognitive shortfalls that harms knowledge acquiring, as also, in most cases,
results only from educational or environmental problems that are not associated to
cognitive shortfalls.
This training program aims to provide interdisciplinarity and unite theoryand practice
during the developed activities, aiding the teacher, facilitate and maximize students
learning, arousing their interest into the importance of the academic subject. Monitoring
is an activity that puts the student in interaction with didactic experiences. The teaching
routine, class preparation as well as stance training facing the most diverse situations
found in teaching, serve as solid bases to those who covet academic carriers.
To avoid diculties and even to enhance the monitor’s eciency and an ideal perfor-
mance in the role demanded by this activity, the monitor must be always searching
for information and updating itself, to avoid setbacks and inconveniences such as
disbelief from the aided students. If the monitor, while student-advisor, loses his iden-
tity, the learning process gets misguided, ipping the scales solely to the professor
side, causing the monitor to lose its meaning against the class and its leader. This
way academic monitoring will contribute very little or, in worst cases scenario, nothing
at all to its growth in the teaching approach. The initiative and relevance to study the
theme of this paper came from the need to verify if academic monitory contributes
in a positive way to the students learning, favoring and supporting the studies, here
restricted to the educational scope of Bachelor degree in Odontology, as well as the
experience lived by the monitor in its rst steps towards teaching, if monitoring can
assign relevant considerations as, for example, to evaluate the monitor’s prole and if
the developed activities guarantee conclusive bases to determine a possible conduc-
tion and motivation to a sequence in teaching carrier.
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Nunes et al.
Materials and Methods
The monitory activities in Pharmacology (sophomore year) in the Odontology course
at the State University “Júlio de MesquitaFilho” Araçatuba’s campus were developed
on class days and in extra class times. The monitor attended the subject’s classes
weekly, aiding the students when needed. Furthermore, the monitor would schedule
program content reviews to classes of both terms, in a way that they had an explan-
atory feature in on class and answering doubts and questions on the next. They were
all executed in opposite time to the scheduled classes, at night for day time classes
and vice-versa.
Outlined study groups with fewer students for better exploitation of the meeting were
made, even with the prerogative of answering all doubts and diculties they had.
These study groups took place on the campus library or in the students’ home (when
these had enough room to accommodate them in an organized and plausible fash-
ion). According to Perpétuo and Gonçalvez7. The group dynamic composes a valu-
able educational instrument that can be used to work the teaching-learning when it
chooses an educational conception that values as much as theory as practice and
considers all involved in this process as assets.
Another accessory idealized and accomplished was the auxiliary system assistance
to home exercise regimen, therefore, the students that went through some kind of
scholar withdraw, for example, illness or surgical procedure, were accounted for and
aided in their homes to be aware of the contents taught in class and updated as to
assignments.
Likewise in the year of 2015, the monitor (first author) created, by his own hand, a
study tutorial, which covered all subjects and contents from the politic-pedagog-
ical program of the subject, with the goal to guide and direct the students during
the time they would be studying on their own, just as it is imperative to every
student the individual dedication to acquire knowledge. In addition, throughout
the school year, the students supported by the monitor, held a virtual group to
solve exercises or work doubts out on a faster and safest way that involved
everyone, so they could share their inquiries, suggestions and deliberations. Par-
renoud8 highlights that the teacher’s figure on formative evaluation demands dis-
position, and a stance that won’t end in the instrumentality, but an active posi-
tioning and a teaching methodology planning filled with intentionality to face
learning difficulties.
After the development of the monitory in the discipline, a data collection was executed
on the institution data base, having as register the information obtained about the
number of enrolled students and failures and, afterwards, such data was processed
and segmented (related to day-time and night-time courses) to subserve the making
of charts, aiming for a better visualization and comprehension of the reached results.
To statistical analysis, it was considered as variable the number of failures and as vari-
ation factor the presence or not of the monitory in the corresponding school year. The
data presented normal distribution and was subjected to variance analysis, followed
by Student-Newman-Keuls test.
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Nunes et al.
Results and Discussion
Table 1. Percentage of students’ disapprovals of the Integral period in the discipline of Pharmacology of
FOA / UNESP, according to the school year analyzed
School year analyzed Number of enrolled
students Number of failures Failures percentage
2011 78 12 15,3% a
2012 81 09 11,2% b
2013 79 13 16,4% a
2014 76 12 15,8% a
2015 74 03 4,1% c
2016 78 04 5,1% c
Different superscript letters indicate a statistical difference between the percentage of disapprovals in the
school years described (Student-Newman-Keuls, p <0.001).
Table 2.Percentages of failures o nigh-time course students in the Pharmacology subject at FOA/UNESP,
according to the school year analyzed
School year analyzed Number of enrolled
students Number of failures Failures percentage
2011 25 05 20,0% b
2012 28 06 21,4% b
2013 29 08 27,5% a
2014 24 05 20,8% b
2015 24 02 8,3% c
2016 18 00 0,0% d
Different superscript letters indicate a statistical difference between the percentage of disapprovals in the
school years described (Student-Newman-Keuls, p <0.001).
According to the information contained in the previous charts, it is noted that the Pharma-
cology subject in the years prior to the start of the monitoring had high levels of failure as
can be seen through the percentage (%) of failures, as much in the day-time course as in
the night-time course. After the monitory’s annexation to the subject, it is observed on the
rst year (2015) a reduction in the percentage of failure in both courses (average o ~12%
for day-time and ~19% for night-time courses) when compared to the year of 2014, when
there wasn’t a monitor performing its role in this activity. As there is a prospect showing
high levels of failure in the four prior to the monitory’s introduction, it is reasonable to imply
that it was ruling for a better performance of the students in the subject and, hence a sig-
nicant reduction in the number of failures, being categorical in this action, for these are
future professionals that will render aid to health and lives of others.
In addition to the mitigation of the failures number, monitory also achieved impres-
sive and lush deeds, since some students that had failed the subject several times
in a dependency system were approved. Specically, one student, that had failed the
subject for ve years, was given special attention and approach, so through solid
accompaniment and motivational assistance the student, that laid unmotivated by
the adverse situation, adopted the task of studying as primordial and necessary for
his life, being able to overcome the obstacles and diculties imposed by the content
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Nunes et al.
and achieved the approval he so longed for, becoming an example for persistency
and effort in the pursuit for admission. Indeed, educating an individual presupposes
to transform it, help it develop its potential, trying to discover others. It is need to
take under consideration the genetic and environmental factors and the interaction
between both that education will then modify9.
Justiably, the peculiarity that the monitor when studying the subject himself went
through the same diculties and requisitions made it easy the way he performed his
duties, the way he should transmit the information to the monitored students, as well
as the understanding related to the problems the students faced and the applicable
measure to answer their questionings10. According Coelho, from the moment that
education starts to understand the principles of the learning process, the problems
that may occur in this area will be treated and solved without taboos and without
traumas. Once that, considering the intrinsic role of the educator in providing support
to the process of learning so the student is able to develop itself safely, in the constant
quest for its independence and autonomy11. The evaluation of learning is compre-
hended as a rigorous practice of accompaniment and reorientation of the student,
facing the diculties of learning and thus, ensure students development.
In relation to the total number of failures in the night-time course in the year of 2016,
being of 0%, is mainly justiable for the smaller number of students in class and in a
way this made possible to have greater control and perception over the students indi-
vidual diculties, as a result, knowledge and information transmission were done in a
holistic manner, since the students diculties were clear, everyone could expose their
its setback with less shyness, even because collective experience allowed greater
exposition and the immediate feedback cooperated in the students critical analysis
development10. Another explanation is based on the average class size making it
able to combine a diversity of students prole with the monitor’s attention. Kokkelen-
berg13 studied the fact that the number of students (n) in a classroom interfere in the
study-learning e as a consequence in the college students grade. Just as, Bedard and
Kuhn14, analyzed how the size of the classrooms interfere in the evaluation made by
students about teachers’ performances, whose smaller classrooms were the ones
with the best mentor’s eciency.
A crucial goal of the monitory program is to intensify the cooperation between teach-
ers and students in the academic activities, being processed as something of extreme
revolution to contribute to enhance graduation teaching, for in this context, the teacher
works in the condition of understanding learning construction process and interfer-
ing to lead the group into a redetermination of learning. The interaction between the
actors involved around knowledge acquisition becomes a central element in evalua-
tion. Esteban15 considers that, to evaluate doesn’t mean to judge its learning, it must
be a moment that reveals the process of knowledge construction, when the student is
not yet aware of its possibilities for advance and overcoming.
The monitoring is a learning space for the student, favoring its personal, academic
and professional growth. It tends to rene its abilities as a teacher and motivate it
to follow this path, or helps it realize the hardships faced by the professionals in this
area, for its own development16. In this context, being a monitor propelled the stu-
dent into an orientation about its professional future, directing it to pursue a carrier in
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Nunes et al.
teaching and it was a landmark for an evaluation and personal conclusion to dene its
prosecution area: its ingress in post-graduation.
Thus, it was possible to verify that the monitory had positive effects on the students
learning, allowing also verifying that the formative assistance has positive effects in
the students formation, ensuring the access to knowledge and it was indispensable to
the subjects covered content systematization, since advising and monitoring the stu-
dents made them acquire greater ease in studying. Furthermore, the presence of the
monitor contributes deeply to the right performance of the students, for it enhances
academic formation for both aided students and the monitor itself. Therefore it would
be viable to institute the monitory in all subjects, when possible; because this is also
developed as a positive instrument in the process of facing learning diculties.
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