The Mississippi State University Learning Center’s academic-oriented program, which aims to help increase student success in the classroom, is on its way to national certification.
Supplemental Instruction started in spring 2015 in hopes to help students increase their success rates in historically difficult classes. SI Supervisor and Coordinator Chelsey Vincent said originally, SI began with seven leaders throughout seven sections of classes. In the course of one semester, it grew to 21 leaders.
“We funded SI through the Learning Center initially, so that’s why we started small,” Vincent said. “After the spring, the Center for Student Success learned about SI, and wanted to help with funding the program.”
The process of deciding which classes would benefit from SI begins by looking at the classes with the highest percentage of students making D’s, F’s and withdrawing from the course.
Director of Student Success Rodney Pearson said chemistry, biology, American government, psychology and almost all math classes are among the historically hard classes for students to pass.
“We hire a student who has done fairly well in that class in the past, and we pay them to go to class again,” Pearson said. “They go to class, take notes and then two or three nights a week, they hold group-tutoring sessions.”
When students attend the voluntary group tutoring session, the SI leaders act as facilitators and try to get the students to discuss among themselves. SI leader Taylor Reeves said SI is not tutoring, rather it is more like a group discussion.
“My job is not to be your tutor, but to lead this group discussion of people learning these new concepts, and making sure that it’s not getting too far away from what they need to be learning,” Reeves said. “It’s all about leading this group discussion and the students learning from each other.”
Reeves is an SI leader for modern U.S. history with Professor Stephen Powell. Reeves said on average, around 10 to 20 students show up to an SI session, and this number fluctuates with what is covered during class. Reeves said the closest he has ever come to having no one show up is after a midterm when only one person attended. SI leaders are required to wait for more than half of their session time in case a student shows up.
“If the session is for an hour and 15 minutes, the SI leader has to sit there for 45 minutes; and if the session is for 50 minutes, the SI leader has to sit there for 30 minutes,” Reeves said.
In order for the Learning Center to receive data from SI, the students must provide their net IDs when they attend a session. Reeves said other than receiving a student’s net ID, the sessions are completely anonymous. The sessions are on a “come and go as you please” basis.
“What I do for a review session is split the students up into different groups, and have them feed and learn off each other,” Reeves said. “It can be a fun experience.”
In order to be an SI leader, there are certain qualifications to meet. Vincent said the potential SI leader needs to have made an A in the class, have a 3.25 GPA, have open availability to attend the class and hold SI sessions two to three times a week. Reeves said he is also required to hold one office hour per week, which is held at the Learning Center.
“We send an email out to students, and invite them to apply,” Vincent said. “After the application process, we interview everybody that applies and then from there, we work with faculty members and make a good decision for the class.”
Vincent said each SI leader works a maximum of 10 hours a week, and gets paid $8.50 an hour. Of those 10 hours, three are spent retaking the class, three are spent holding SI sessions, two are spent planning those sessions, one is spent for their office hour and the last one is spent talking with Vincent and the professor of the class.
After modeling their program off of the original program at the University of Missouri in Kansas City, MSU’s SI program is on its way to becoming nationally certified. Vincent said in order to be nationally certified, the program has to have trained supervisors, a consistent 20 percent attendance rate, higher ABC rates in SI than non-SI and routine observance of SI leaders.
“You have to submit documentation that all of the requirements are filled and then they will review it and either certify you or not certify you,” Vincent said. “We are waiting for a couple more things before we submit, and then we should know by the end of the year whether we have become a nationally-certified SI school.”
If MSU becomes a nationally-certified SI school, it will be the only certified school in Mississippi.
The SI program is only made available to the classes where the professor wants it. If a professor does not want their class affiliated with SI, then an SI leader will not be placed in the class, Vincent added.
“Faculty support is crucial because we found that when faculty members talk about SI in their classes, we have higher attendance in our SI sessions,” Vincent said. “If a faculty member doesn’t want SI, then we won’t work with them.”
Vincent said they have had faculty members reach out to them wanting SI in their classes. Once this happens, Vincent looks at the class’s DFW rates and determines whether SI would help that particular class.
Powell said he has thoroughly enjoyed working with SI this semester. Powell said he believes one of the major things SI helps with is getting the students more comfortable with speaking around people who are not necessarily their peers.
“I think then hopefully what that does is manifest itself in later years, so when students are turning into juniors and seniors, they are willing to go talk to their professors and T.A.’s and have professional conversations with them,” Powell said.
When Reeves and Powell meet each week, they discuss what the SI session should focus on. Powell said these meetings are crucial because it allows for Reeves to focus heavily on the information on the test.
Along with becoming nationally certified, Vincent said the Learning Center has various goals for Supplemental Instruction.
“We not only want to increase the quality of our SI sessions, but the quantity as well,” Vincent said. “We also want to increase awareness of the program in general, and make it known to students that this resource is made available to them.”