Supplemental Instruction: Short- and Long-Term Impact.

In recent years, academic programs have focused on retention and the role that academic assistance programs play for all students. Tinto (1993) has reported that over half of students entering colleges and universities for the first time will leave their first institution before graduating, with the majority of the attrition occurring during the first year.Past retention and assistance efforts in higher education have often focused heavily on learning support programs that offer developmental classes targeted at students identified as risk. Although these approaches provide important academic support, it has become increasingly recognized that student performance problems cannot be addressed effectively by serving only those students who demonstrate predisposed learning weaknesses or learning problems (Commander, Stratton, Callahan, & Smith, 1996). As a result, many colleges and universities are making a commitment to provide academic support for a wider population.Over the years, a variety of academic assistance programs have evolved. According to Levin and Levin (1991), several programs have claimed responsibility for improvements in student performance rates. Among these are academic advising, career counseling, tutoring, freshmen orientation courses, minority programs, study skills courses, summer orientation, and test-taking clinics. More recently, Simpson, Hynd, and Nist (1997) have described current practices that focus on developing students' learning strategies. These are programs that emphasize self-regulated learning and teach college level cognitive and metacognitive strategies. One of the programs evaluated by the authors was Supplemental Instruction, a rapidly growing program of academic support which has claimed to increase student achievement and reduce attrition.Supplemental Instruction (SI) was originally developed at the University of Missouri-Kansas City in in the schools of medicine, dentistry, and pharmacy for students who had no apparent academic weaknesses, but who were having academic difficulty in high risk courses (Martin & Arendale, 1992, pg. 3). These were defined as that historically have at least a 30% rate of F or D grades and/or withdrawals. The popularity of SI expanded greatly over the past decade. It was adapted for students at all academic levels by providing voluntary small group sessions that focus on the integration of learning strategies with material from a content area course (Martin & Arendale, 1992; 1994).According to Shaya, Petty, and Petty (1993), improvement of at-risk student performance is due to the nonthreatening milieu in which students can learn to function on the intellectual level necessary for postsecondary work. Because of the voluntary nature of the SI program, expectations for the conditional students are the same as for traditional students, which likely contributes to the success of the conditional students.Not only does SI offer an opportunity for academic improvement, but it can also serve the important purpose of helping students bond to each other and the institution. Because SI sessions consist of small group work, they provide an opportunity for collaborative learning and may help foster a sense of community.Tinto (1993) contends that both social and academic integration into institutions of higher education have an impact on student persistence. He argues that student decisions to persist in higher education are more a function of what they experience after arriving at an institution rather than what occurred prior to arrival. According to Tinto and Martin, Blanc, and Arendale (1996), difficulty begins for college students when they encounter new pressures to perform in a timely manner at the higher intellectual level required at postsecondary institutions. Conditional students, those designated as ill-prepared academically, socially, and/or organizationally, can be said to benefit from the successful model provided by SI leaders (e. …