Supplemental Instruction (SI) in Europe: An Overview of Current SI Programmes

Supplemental Instruction (SI) is a 47-year old proven peer-learning model that addresses student engagement, performance and retention as well as the transition to Higher Education (HE). SI was developed at the University of Missouri Kansas City in the US and has received wide recognition. Today the method has practitioners all over the United States as well as in several other countries around the world. SI was first adopted in Europe in the early 1990s at Kingston University in UK and has since spread to numerous other Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) in the region. However, little has been published about SI in Europe besides some research papers addressing the impact of the method at specific HEIs. Thus, an overview of the SI programmes in Europe is of interest, addressing the number of HEIs that uses SI as well as information on programme sizes, goals, outcomes, etc. The present study provides such an overview and present results based on surveys sent to all supervisors trained in the methodology in Europe. The results from the study above have been published in their entirety in a report (Malm, et al., 2018). The idea is to continuously revise the contents of the report to include new programmes, exclude terminated ones and make updates in existing ones. In that way, it can be a support for practitioners seeking contact with others or wanting ideas or information from other SI schemes. However, it is too extensive to be of interest for a more casual reader interested in SI in Europe. Hence this contribution to provide analysis, summaries and conclusions from the data in the report.
Based on the quantitative data presented above we can make rough estimates of some key numbers for SI in Europe today (based on calculated averages multiplied with number of HEIs with active SI programmes):
 73 HEIs have active SI programmes
 There are ~285 active supervisors leading the programmes
 1480 courses/modules are supported annually with SI
 7000 SI leaders are employed each year
 79,000 students participate in SI each year
 784,000 contact hours in total per year for students attending SI
Thus, it may be concluded that the usage of SI is quite substantial. What obviously can be improved up on is the geographical distribution of SI programmes within Europe. The goals of SI, to increase student performance and retention, aid transition to HE and to improve student engagement are of interest to any HEI.