With some students needing additional help with their classwork outside of their classrooms, instructors are pleading to get a supplemental instruction session that corresponds with their course.
SI coordinator Luis Barrueta said large percentages of students who attend SI sessions are preforming better than students who do not attend.
SI is proving to be more successful than other tutoring programs that are available to students on campus because of its specificity courses it is in correlation with.
It started in the summer of 2002 from a Title five grant through the First Year Experience program. The program is now institutionalized, “something that just happened last year,” said Barrueta.
He also disclosed that the college’s dean guides which departments SI covers and that recent funding from STEM now supports SI sessions for geology and biology, the life science department. This support has had immediate affect on students enrolled in the courses.
“I wouldn’t have passed geology one without it,” DeAndre Massey, 32, administrative justice and environmental science major. I had biology the semester before and received a C, to go from that science class with a C to another science class and get an A, my study habits didn’t really change other than the SI session.”
SI coaches are allotted two 50 minute sessions each week and roughly spend about two hours preparing for each, explained geology SI coach Angela Appel, 22, geology major.
“I create a lot of worksheets for my sessions that kind of review the material but I recast it in a different way and give them a chance to work together on some problems or some concept questions,” Jessica Asbell, 28, astronomy SI coach said.
Students who are unable to attend or are not enrolled in a course with an adjunct session can benefit from worksheets and mock exams that are prepared for students by SI coaches.
“ I couldn’t attend the actual SI sessions,” Hanna Denado, 19, Radiologic Technology major said. “But the SI coach told everybody that there was a mock test. It helps you to practice and to prepare for the test.”
Barrueta said the new Learning Resource Center director is adopting SI coach training for tutors working in the LRC, which may potentially change the style in which tutors help students.
“Our SI support is seventy five percent in mathematics because that is were the most need is in the college as a whole,” Barrueta said.
“You get more of an opportunity usually in SI sessions to do more board work, get up there and do problems rather than hearing a professor lecture material says math coach, Matthew Trias, 29, biology major.
“We are the model program in Southern California, we have helped numerous institutions start their own SI program, we are talking about East Los Angeles College, Santa Monica College, Los Angeles South West, Victor Valley College, a lot of colleges,” Baruetta said.
