Supplemental Instruction (SI) is a learning enhancement program originally developed at the University of Missouri at Kansas City. The program has been adopted at over 100 institutions of higher education as a method of improving student learning. SI targets high-risk courses instead of high-risk students and offers assistance on an outreach basis in regularly scheduled, out of class sessions.
Through this program, a student who has received a high grade in a targeted course undergoes SI training and then re-attends the course to model effective student practices and attitudes: attending every class meeting, taking notes, reading all assigned materials, and asking appropriate questions. The SI Leader schedules and conducts at least three group meetings a week at times convenient to members of the class. During the sessions, the SI Leaders facilitate students’ discussion and understanding of course information by using interactive learning strategies that encourage involvement, comprehension, synthesis, cognitive monitoring, and higher order reasoning skills. The raw material for SI sessions is the content of lectures and course-assigned reading materials. It is important to note that SI Leaders are not mini-lecturers and do not re-teach the material; instead, they are model students of the subject.
Students attend SI on a voluntary basis and may attend as many times during the term as they wish. Generally, it is best if students attend at least once a week. Our data shows that students who attend SI earn, on the average, one half-letter grade higher than students who do not attend. These results replicate data gathered during the development of the program at UMKC.
SUNY Broome Community College is proud to offer Supplemental Instruction to its students for over 30 years! For general information or questions about the SUNY Broome SI Program, please contact Loreta Paniccia at 607-778-5162 or paniccialm@sunybroome.edu.
