Supplemental Instruction

Supplemental Instruction, developed in 1973 at the University of Missouri at Kansas City, is a program designed to provide out of class structured study sessions. The purposes of the program are to help students learn how to think about and study for challenging courses (those in which students have difficulty completing successfully) and to learn how to understand and meet the expectations of a particular faculty person.

These out of class sessions are led by Student Leaders, students who have demonstrated their abilities in that class with that professor. Student Leaders must be recommended by the faculty person before he or she can work in the program. Exceptions to this occur when more than one faculty person agree to share a Student Leader or when a course is departmentalized and all the faculty share one person.

Students who attend SI sessions regularly tend to raise their grades by one full letter. They also gain valuable skills and strategies for being successful in future classes.