Can Peer Mentoring Improve Online Teaching Effectiveness? An RCT During the COVID-19 Pandemic

(with David Hardt and Johannes Rincke)

Online delivery of higher education has taken center stage but is fraught with issues of student self-organization. We conducted an RCT to study the effects of remote peer mentoring at a German university that switched to online teaching due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Mentors and mentees met one-on-one online and discussed topics like self-organization and study techniques. We find positive impacts on motivation, studying behavior, and exam registrations. The intervention did not shift earned credits on average, but we demonstrate strong positive effects on the most able students. In contrast to prior research, effects were more pronounced for male students.

AEARCTR-0005868, CESifo Working Paper No. 8671

Current draft 

R&R at Labour Economics

Coverage: Press Release (German), Bayerischer Rundfunk (in German), The Education Exchange, Ökonomenstimme (in German)

Tutoring in (Online) Higher Education

(with David Hardt and Johannes Rincke)

Demand for personalized online tutoring in higher education is growing but there is little research on its effectiveness. We conducted an RCT offering remote peer tutoring in micro- and macroeconomics at a German university teaching online due to the Covid-pandemic. Treated students met in small groups, in alternating weeks with and without a more senior student tutor. The treatment improved study behavior and increased contact to other students. Tutored students achieve around 30% more credits and a one grade level better GPA across treated subjects. Our findings suggest that the program reduced outcome inequality. We find no impacts on mental health.

CESifo Working Paper No. 9555

AEA RCT No. 7686

ICT, Collaboration, and Innovation: Evidence from BITNET

(with Kathrin Wernsdorf and Martin Watzinger)

Does access to technologies that reduce information and communication costs increase innovation? We examine this question by exploiting the staggered adoption of BITNET across U.S. universities in the 1980s. BITNET, an early version of the Internet, enabled e-mail-based knowledge exchange and collaboration among academics. After the adoption of BITNET, university-connected inventors increase patenting substantially. The effects are driven by collaborative patents by new inventor teams. The patents induced by ICT are closely related to science. In contrast, we neither find an effect on patents not closely related to science nor on corporate inventors unconnected to universities.

Short-listed for EPIP Young Scholar Award 2020

Accepted at Journal of Public Economics

CEPR Discussion Paper No. 17179

Coverage: Ökonomenstimme (in German)