The effects of supplemental instruction on student success at Delaware Technical Community College
Date
2018
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Journal ISSN
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
Delaware Technical Community College (DTCC) is a two-year, open admission college that has served the needs of Delawareans for over 50 years. Throughout these years, low pass rates in certain developmental and gatekeeper courses have been a noticeable problem. Two such courses are Elementary Algebra (MAT020) and Anatomy & Physiology I (BIO120). Different attempts to address this problem include revision of syllabi, course redesigns, reorganization of the tutoring services, and incorporating technology into the classroom. Despite these efforts, the problem still persists at the college and continues to be a challenge to student success. In order to ameliorate this problem, DTCC implemented a new program in supplemental instruction. ☐ Created in 1973 at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC), supplemental instruction (SI) is a peer-led academic support service. An SI coordinator, a college staff or faculty member trained in the UMKC model, leads the SI program. SI is characterized by sessions in study skills and notetaking as well as incorporation of group collaboration and various learning strategy activities. These sessions are developed and managed by a trained SI leader who has previously taken the course, been highly successful in it, and attends the class again to serve as a model student. DTCC launched its new SI program in August 2016, starting with two sections of BIO120 and two sections of MAT020. The main goal of the SI program is to increase the pass rates in BIO120 and MAT020, which will lead to greater student success. The purpose of this Education Leadership Portfolio (ELP) is two-fold: (1) to illustrate my leadership role in the research, development, and implementation of the new SI program, and (2) to analyze the effectiveness of the program in order to make recommendations for future improvements. ☐ Creating, implementing, and evaluating SI at DTCC involves multiple steps. SI coordinators were interviewed, hired, and trained in the UMKC SI model. Then, the SI coordinators had to recruit, hire, and train the SI leaders. Each semester, the SI coordinators and SI leaders work closely to make the program successful. There are a few ways to analyze the program’s effectiveness. First, SI coordinators compare the grades of the students who attend the SI sessions to the grades of the students who did not attend at all. Next, the coordinators conduct weekly observations of the SI sessions and examine the results to determine if the expectations of the program are being met. Finally, student surveys and interviews determine which aspects of the program the attendees liked and which ones they would change, as well as the possible reasons that non-attendees did not go to the SI sessions. ☐ The results of the grade, observation, and survey analyses show how well the program is meeting its goals. Moreover, this ELP provides the insight needed to make recommendations for improving the program in the future. Through continued professional training and rigorous evaluation, this program has the potential to reach its ultimate goal of improving student retention of material, mitigating failure and dropout rates, and increasing the graduation rate of the college.
Description
Keywords
Education, Academic support, Supplemental instruction