Student leaders in Supplemental Instruction (SI) are valuable to Southern Arkansas University as they pass their experience in “challenging” courses along to those who need help academically.
Rachel Jenkins, SI coordinator, said leaders in the program are hand-picked by faculty for an important job: helping students better understand difficult subjects, in a group setting. “It’s all about retention,” Jenkins said. “Our SI leaders help students deal with not only difficult content but develop good study habits and strategies, give them insider tips, and help them get to know other students in their class. They create a sense of community.”
Ashley Westbrook, a senior majoring in Agriculture Business, of Hope, Ark., said she attended SI sessions as a freshman and is now a session leader herself. “My SI leader really helped me get through the class,” she said. “I needed to learn how to explain things in the detail my professor expected. I had to learn how to take notes and key in on topics.”
Westbrook now passes those skills along to students who attend her sessions. SI leaders take problems similar to those found in homework and discuss them in a group setting so that students grasp the concepts, formats and theories of difficult classes. They teach students how to listen, take notes, and evaluate issues. Many freshmen need help studying on a university level. SI leaders are selected by faculty because they have taken and exceled in such courses – often because they took advantage of SI sessions themselves.
Rachel Jenkins
SI is a series of weekly review sessions available to students who want to improve their understanding of challenging course material and get better grades. Attendance is voluntary. Jenkins said data shows that students who consistently attend SI earn a higher grade and have a higher GPA upon graduation. The program has been available through Student Support Services for more than 15 years. Faculty members are invited to allow SI leaders to sit in on difficult classes, take notes and develop lesson plans for sessions.
Jenkins said faculty has been great about participating in the program. “They are very supportive of the SI model. They have seen the effects of SI, the boost in confidence students get from sessions. They talk about not only the important information that leaders share, but the really great study tips, the organizational tools and note-taking skills students learn.”
Westbrook praised Dr. Pierre Boumtje, professor of agriculture economics, for his support of SI. “It’s important that I have a faculty member who recommends SI and praises SI leaders,” she said.
Westbrook said that on the first day of classes, she will stand up and introduce herself to students, letting them know she is a “trusted resource” who has taken the course before and passed it with an A. She also lets them know about SI and how they can participate. In sessions, she conducts discussions or Q&A periods or reviews vocabulary. Classes are 50 minutes long, and “30 to 40 minutes are usually spent on actual application problems or deep-thinking analysis,” she said. “The last few minutes of the session, I’ll summarize what we’ve discussed or predict test questions, so that they can think about (the professor’s) process.” She leads two sessions per week in the Agriculture building.
“I map out lesson plans for each session,” Westbrook said. “I am the facilitator. I have things for the students to do, a process for them to follow. I cover both the teaching style and the subject. Trying to mold a student’s understanding of the topic is a challenge. A lot of them come for that purpose – they want clarification of what’s expected.”
She said she has 10-20 students who attend consistently; closer to test time, “more will file in for review.”
Jenkins said SI leaders “expect students to work with other people, to toil with the material, because that’s how you learn it.” She goes to Freshman Seminar classes and lets students know about SI and what it offers. “I tell them to go expecting to work. In most cases, they don’t do homework in sessions – there are few sessions where homework is even allowed. They do similar problems, quizzes, study guides – activities designed to help ensure that students understand the content. We’re helping them help themselves.”
By observing classes, SI leaders “are more aware of what’s going on than the students themselves. They see that most students don’t take notes, aren’t engaged, aren’t present,” Jenkins said. SI leaders notice that many times students don’t even have textbooks. “They encourage them to buy those books and bring them to sessions,” Jenkins said.
Feedback is given by students and faculty and leaders are rated. “Reports are posted and sent up the chain,” Jenkins said. “Most people find SI leaders to be very helpful. I got lots of feedback from students saying, ‘I wouldn’t have passed the class without help.”
She said that in describing SI to freshmen, she asks students to think about their previous experience “working in groups. ‘Are you thinking about your high school experiences where you’re sitting in someone’s living room and not really accomplishing much? If so, I recommend you give this a try. You’re studying with someone who’s taken the class before and done well. You’ll walk away knowing what you know and what you don’t know and given tools to master the content you are struggling with.’”
Working in groups allows students to “bounce ideas off other people and discover new ways of studying. It’s sometimes helpful to hear content presented in multiple ways. Sometimes another student will say things in ways that resonate differently. Students will share their study tips – ‘this is how I remember this.’ Other students might have information in their notes that you didn’t get.”
Most importantly, Jenkins said, SI allows students to get to know each other, share phone numbers, and study together outside the sessions. “Our goal is to retain students,” she said, “but ultimately, we want students to be autonomous. That’s the dream – you don’t need SI anymore. You know your study skills and you’ve got your cohort. You can do it.”
