How does SI work?
Key Persons in the SI Model
• The SI Coordinator is a trained professional who is responsible for identifying the targeted courses, gaining faculty support, selecting and training SI leaders, as well as marketing and evaluating the program on an ongoing basis.
• The faculty members of the identified historically difficult courses invite and support SI. Faculty members screen SI leaders for content competency and approve selections as well as collaborate with the SI leaders and Coordinator on a regular basis.
• The SI leaders ("near peers") are students who have been deemed course competent and have been approved by the course instructor and the SI Coordinator. They are trained in proactive learning and study strategies as well as facilitation skills. SI leaders attend course lectures, take notes, read all assigned materials and conduct three to five out-of-class SI sessions a week. The SI leader is the "model student," a facilitator who assists students to integrate course content and learning strategies.
• Students participating in the SI sessions are the most crucial component of SI. SI is introduced to specific historically difficult courses. These courses frequently are introductory or "gatekeeper courses" but also include upper level undergraduate courses and courses in professional schools.
History of Supplemental Instruction
SI was created by Deanna C. Martin, Ph.D., at the University of Missouri-Kansas City in 1973. Dr. Martin was assigned the task of decreasing the attrition rate of minority students in the schools of medicine, pharmacy and dentistry and was given a grant of $7,000 with which to do so. After initially offering SI at the health science professional schools, it was extended throughout the university.
After a rigorous review process in 1981, the SI Program became one of the few postsecondary programs to be designated by the U.S. Department of Education as an Exemplary Educational Program. The National Diffusion Network (NDN), the national dissemination agency for the U.S. Department of Education, provided federal funds for dissemination of SI. Although the NDN was discontinued by the U.S. government, national and international dissemination continues.
Faculty and staff from over 1800 institutions from 30 countries have been trained to implement their own SI programs. Outside the United States, SI operates in Australia, Canada, China, Denmark, Egypt, Grenada, Malaysia, Marshall Islands, Mexico, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, South Africa, Sweden, United Kingdom and the West Indies. The International Center for Supplemental Instruction was established in 2002 by Dr. Glen Jacobs, Director for the Center for Academic Development, as well as the Executive Director of the International Center for Supplemental Instruction at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
For a more complete history of the program, see:
Widmar, G. E. (1994). Supplemental Instruction: From small beginnings to a national program. In D. C. Martin & Arendale, D. R. (Eds.), Supplemental Instruction: Increasing achievement and retention (pp. 3-10). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
