[3][4][5][6][7] SI is also called "Peer-Assisted Study Sessions," "PASS" or "SI-PASS" in parts of the Africa, Europe, North America, and Oceania.
[8][9] 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.
Since SI is an enrichment program designed to target high risk courses, it takes the emphasis off the individual student's projected performance.
Staff devote a high percentage of time to one-on-one tutorial instruction, with basic skills courses and workshops complementing individual services.
"[11] 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.
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.
[13] 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.
[19] Video Supplemental Instruction (VSI) allows the SI leader to play back a lecture at a rate tailored to the particular group of students.
Typically, these students fall at or near the bottom of the fourth quartile in terms of entry level scores and/or high school rank.
[20][14] [2][23] Supplemental Instruction was also supposed to be cheap: What Martin and her collaborators sought was "an academic support service that would be both cost-effective and successful in reducing the high rates of student attrition.
[12] Thus, SI was founded to be a cheap and effective means to reduce attrition and thereby improve equity in higher-education graduation rates.
"[35] There has been criticism and debate concerning self-selection bias when measuring SI outcomes in non-experimental settings: A. R. Paloyo of the University of Wollongong noted that "we expect the selection-bias term to be nonzero, implying that the observed difference in, say, final marks is not equal to the effect of SI because it is contaminated by self-selection.