Impact of Supplemental Instruction on dropout and graduation rates: an example from 5-year engineering programs

This study focuses on quantitative long-term effects of Supplemental
Instruction (SI) in terms of graduation and dropout rates. One of the main aims
of SI is to introduce students to effective study strategies and techniques. If SI
is introduced at an early stage for new students in higher education, it should
therefore be expected that this action will promote timely graduation. This has
also been indicated in studies at two US universities – University of Missouri
Kansas City and Utah State University. This impact should obviously be of huge
interest to any college or university that wants to introduce SI for their
students. However, more studies from different settings and environments are
needed to be able to generalise the findings from previous studies. This
investigation is one such study for students at an engineering education
faculty.
The results from this study show that SI appears to have a pronounced effect
on student persistence, and that the effect increases continuously with
increasing SI attendance. A student’s chances of graduating from an Master of
Science (MSc) engineering program within six years, increases by approximately
20-35 % for a student attending all SI meetings in the first semester, compared
to a student who does not attend SI. The risk of a student dropping out is
reduced by approximately 20-40 % if he/she attends all SI sessions. The results
also show that all students benefit from attending SI, independent of prior
academic achievement and gender.