Supplemental instruction

Supplemental instruction (SI) is an academic support model that uses peer learning to improve university student retention and student success in high-attrition courses. Supplemental Instruction is used worldwide by institutions of higher learning. SI is also called "Peer-Assisted Study Sessions," "PASS" or "SI-PASS" in parts of Africa, Europe, North America, and Oceania. According to an article in the peer-reviewed journal, Research and Teaching in Developmental Education, "Since its introduction in 1974 at the University of Missouri-Kansas City by Deanna C. Martin, Supplemental Instruction (SI) has been implemented, studied, and evaluated for its effectiveness across a variety of disciplines and institutional levels." The article further noted that for some students,

"SI is a program that works. Since SI is an enrichment program designed to target high risk courses, it takes the emphasis off the individual student's projected performance. A high risk course, as defined repeatedly in the literature, is any course (usually entry-level) in which unsuccessful enrollment (percentages of D's and F's as final grades and rates of withdrawal from the course and/or institution) exceeds 30%."

Supplemental Instruction differs from other types of student support, such as tutoring:

"Typical learning center programs operate on a drop-in basis, offering services primarily designed to address the needs of high-risk students. Staff devote a high percentage of time to one-on-one tutorial instruction, with basic skills courses and workshops complementing individual services."

Unlike tutoring, SI is attached to the course and not the student: "This approach focused not on 'at risk students,' but rather on 'at risk classes,' entry-level classes in health sciences, and later in general arts and sciences classes." According to Martin and Arendale, Supplemental Instruction "provides regularly scheduled, out-of-class, peer-facilitated sessions that offer students an opportunity to discuss and process course information." An SI program organizes peer support through an "SI leader," who is typically a student who succeeded in the particular academic course (e.g., Organic Chemistry, Economics 101, Algebra II). SI leaders

"attend the course lectures where they take notes and complete assigned readings. The specialists also schedule and conduct three or four, fifty-minute SI sessions each week at times convenient to the majority of students in the course. Student attendance is voluntary. Individual attendance by participants ranges widely from one to twenty-five hours, and averages 6.5 hours per semester. The leader is presented as a 'student of the subject.'"

The use of trained SI leaders rather than professors, lecturers, PhDs, MDs or other credentialed experts allows the service to scale up quickly to large numbers of students and for a large variety of courses at the undergraduate, graduate, and professional-school levels. The SI model evolved during the 1970s and 1980s from its beginnings at a single "Student Learning Center" at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Supplemental Instruction expanded globally in the 1990s: Higher-education institutions around the world have adopted some variant of the UMKC Supplementary Instruction model. Some attribute this widespread diffusion to the SI model and to its founders.

"Early on, SI’s founders decided that the SI model should be modified by its users rather than its creators. Martin and Blanc ... argue that SI should be 'fluid rather than rigid, dynamic rather than static.'"