Students need help in transitioning from high school to university. It’s important to facilitate their guidance in choosing the course of study and consequently their experience with the first exams, reducing the abandonment. The University of Turin, financially supported by the banking institution Compagnia di San Paolo, has invested in e-learning creating Start@unito: a Learning Management System that delivers twenty freely available, self-paced, online courses on different topics. The paper discusses the model adopted by Start@unito and the first results obtained.