Increasing Students' Success: When Supplemental Instruction Becomes Mandatory

Abstract

The effectiveness of making Supplemental Instruction (SI) a required part of a history class and mandating student participation was compared to the Kansas City model of 1-hour sessions held several times each week outside of class for interested students. The researchers compared mean final course grades in U.S. History and semester grade point averages (GPA) for 432 students in three groups: students enrolled in a mandatory SI history section (n = 108), students enrolled in three regular SI history sections who attended SI voluntarily (n = 105), and students enrolled in the three regular SI history sections who did not attend SI (n = 219). Students in both mandatory and voluntary SI groups earned significantly higher course grades and semester GPAs than students in the non-SI group; however, there was no significant difference between participation in mandatory SI or voluntary SI groups for these two outcomes.