Quantifying the soft power of SI

Supplemental Instruction is one of the most successful programmes of peer-assisted study in existence. Numerous studies show that SI attendance correlates with student achievement, regardless of the level of knowledge of the student prior to commencing their studies. The present study, from Humanities at Lund University, Sweden, outlines a method for gauging the effect of SI on soft values such as study attitudes, confidence, and self-reported study skills. To eliminate the effect of different backgrounds, the study is based on 388 pairs of two questionnaires (before and after the semester) and SI attendance is correlated with the change
in the self-reported values, rather than with the final absolute value. It is shown that issues dealing with study skills and strategies correlate more closely with SI-attendance than do psychological issues such as
ambition and confidence.