Supplemental Instruction, Learning Communities, and Students Studying Together

Community College Review, Fall, 1998 by William E. Maxwell

Tinto and Russo (1994) have reported preliminary and intriguing evidence that "learning communities," which attempt to develop linkages among teachers and students, have positive effects on community college social integration (Gabelnick, MacGregor, Matthews, & Leigh-Smith, 1990; Rendon, 1994; Tinto, 1997, 1998; Tinto, Goodsell-Love, & Russo, 1993; Tinto, Russo, & Kadel, 1994). Research has found supplemental instruction, a type of learning community program, to have as much or more impact on several student outcomes than has been noted for several other learning community interventions (Blanc, DeBuhr, & Martin, 1983, p. 85; Kenney & Kallison, 1994, p. 77; Tinto, 1997, pp. 606-609; Tinto, Goodsell-Love, & Russo, 1993, p. 20).

Supplemental instruction has been adapted in community colleges from urban university settings where it was first developed as a learning community strategy for nontraditional students (Blanc, DeBuhr, & Martin, 1983). A defining feature of supplemental instruction lies in its having small groups of students from regular courses voluntarily attend regular workshop sessions that are designated for enrichment rather than stigmatized as remedial. Such programs emphasize learning skills, individualized feedback, collaborative and active learning, and more opportunity for interaction among the students (Arendale, 1994; Burmeister, 1996). The supplemental instruction examined in this research was modified in that the workshops were led by the instructors from the regular courses and, to a lesser extent, by financial aid counselors.

In summary, the rationale for this study rests on three premises: First, although out-of-classroom peer relations are vital influences at four-year residential colleges, research findings are conflicted about the impact of these traditional kinds of social integration on community college student outcomes; second, the kinds of peer relations conventionally examined at four-year colleges should not be assumed a priori as the primary basis for research on community college student relations; and, third, although some community college researchers have questioned the effectiveness of peer relations and of some remedial programs for low income students, other researchers have recommended the potential of learning community programs. Therefore, a major objective of this research was to identify and quantify the kinds of impact that a specific learning community program, namely a modified form of supplemental instruction, had on peer relations at a community college.

Methods

Two categories of students were compared in 19 general education courses at a community college: (a) those students who were receiving financial aid and who also elected to join supplemental instruction workshops, and (b) all other students in the same courses who did not join the workshops. Eight questionnaire survey items were employed to assess the influence of the workshop on various kinds of peer relations.

The population for this study comprised the students at a large community college in California who were attending classes for any of 19 general education courses for which the faculty also offered supplemental instruction (SI) workshops. Two questionnaire surveys were conducted in the classrooms of these courses: (a) early in the semester a survey measured several independent control variables (N=1,359), and (b) a mid-semester survey measured social integration variables (N=744). Because the analysis could be conducted only on subjects who participated in both the first and second classroom surveys, the size of the main study sample was reduced to N=425 (see Table 3), a sample still large enough to warrant a high level of statistical significance.