A Model For Implementing "Supplemental Instruction" In Engineering

Abstract

Supplemental Instruction (SI) is a learning enhancement program. SI targets high risk courses instead of high risk students and offers assistance on an outreach basis in regularly scheduled, out of class sessions. The primary goal of SI is to facilitate students' mastery of the course concepts, however a secondary goal is to encourage students to develop better learning skills and strategies. A student who has received a high grade in a targeted SI course is trained to become an SI leader. As an SI leader, the student re-attends the course to model effective student behaviors, and conducts weekly SI sessions. During the SI sessions, SI leaders facilitate students' understanding of course material via interactive learning strategies which encourage involvement, comprehension and higher order reasoning skills. SI leaders do not re-teach or simply work problems on the board; rather they offer alternative perspectives and exercises designed to mirror the course content. Penn State's SI program was piloted as a part of our larger Undergraduate Teaching Intern Program. The Teaching Intern (TI) Program allows undergraduate students to partner with a professor on a particular course in order to learn about the responsibilities of being a faculty member. This paper provides an overview of both the SI and TI programs, specific details on how to run a course to train for these programs, and preliminary results of the SI program in terms of experiences of the three student SI leaders and achievement results of those students who attended SI sessions versus those who did not.