SUPPLEMENTAL INSTRUCTION PROGRAM

Current Semester: Click Here for Spring 2008 SI Schedule

Several courses offered by the Math Department are supported by the Supplemental Instruction Program.  This program is designed completely for the students' benefit, to help them succeed to their fullest potential in this course.  There is no cost to the students for availing themselves of this program. 

Essentially, here is how this program works.  An undergraduate/graduate student with a strong mathematics background has been designated as the Supplemental Instruction Leader for each course.

First, check to see if your class has a SI session. Your SI Leader’s only goal is to help you learn the material for this course.  Your SI Leader is NOT in any way involved in the grading process for this course; s/he does not grade homework, make up exams, or in any way participate in evaluation. These tasks rest solely with your instructor.  Rather, the SI Leader, during the SI Sessions, will help to answer any questions you might have regarding the material in your course.  More importantly, these sessions are designed to help students realize the areas in which they are having troubles, and help correct them BEFORE the relevant exams, homework, etc...  Therefore, in the SI Sessions, you will find your SI Leader acting more as a discussion leader than a teacher.  The SI Leader will ask YOU how YOU might start a problem, or what method YOU might use, or where YOU think you might have gone astray on a particular problem.  S/he will encourage students to work together to solve problems, rather than have students sit back and ‘watch it go by’ on the board.

 Remember, your SI Leader is NOT involved in the grading process.  So you should feel absolutely at ease in these sessions.  If you make some sort of error in a problem, or if you don’t understand something, ASK!  You need not be afraid of ‘saying something dumb’! The BEST way to learn is to take chances, make some mistakes, have no fear of failure, so that when exams come around you fully understand the material.

 You will be asked to ‘sign in’ when you attend SI sessions.  Such records are being kept for purely administrative reasons, and will not be shown to your instructor until after final semester grades are submitted (if in fact your instructor chooses to see them at all).  We are simply trying to keep track of those students who use the service, in order to determine how much benefit students derive from the sessions.

 You will see your SI Leader attending all of the lectures for your course.  This is so that the specific topics covered, notation, point of view, etc ... that the SI Leader might use in an SI Session will be exactly the same as the corresponding ones used by your instructor.  Your SI Instructor is already quite familiar with the material! 

 This is really a golden opportunity for you.  This program has been used with great success at other universities; in fact, it has been shown that the grades of students who participate regularly in the SI Sessions are on average a full grade point higher than the grades of their classmates who do not participate.  Additionally, the students who do participate tend to continue to do better than their student colleagues in subsequent courses, due to some of the valuable learning skills they develop and hone in the SI Sessions.

 Again, the SI Sessions are completely free of charge to you.