Offering Supplemental Instruction raises first-year students' course grades (d = 0.26) in a randomized field experiment¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · causal r3 · q4 · i1 small
Currency · newest study 2022 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q4 i1 Students offered SI obtained significantly higher grades than control students, with a treatment effect of d = 0.26 (0.45 grade points). → Dekker 2022

Evidence¶

Dekker 2022¶

Dekker, I., Luberti, M., & Stam, J. (2022). Effects of supplemental instruction on grades, mental well-being, and belonging: A field experiment. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6858-4001

q4 · i1 · causal · r3

Pre-registered randomized field experiment: 493 first-year students from 10 courses of study randomly allocated to being offered SI or not; grades analyzed with multilevel regression. The covariate-adjusted treatment effect was "a Cohen’s d of 0.26, and a difference of 0.45 grade points" (p = 0.008).

"When we controlled for demographic covariates (age, gender, previous education) the treatment explained 1.62% of the variance (r2 = 0.02, p = 0.008), which equals a Cohen’s d of 0.26, and a difference of 0.45 grade points"

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Being offered Supplemental Instruction shows no significant effect on first-year students' mental well-being — related
• Being offered Supplemental Instruction shows no significant effect on sense of belonging, measured with a low-reliability scale — related
• Attendance at offered SI sessions is low and highly variable: on average 2.3 of 7 sessions, with 29% never attending — related
• Chatbot outreach increased supplemental instruction tutoring attendance by about two percentage points, mediating a small share of the grade effect — related
• Offering SI costs about €385.88 per invited student (€154 when set-up costs are spread over subsequent quarters) — related