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About SI

SI, or Supplemental Instruction, is a program that is mostly targeted at first year students who are taking historically difficult courses. These are courses with a DFW rate of 25% or higher. SI Leaders are students who have done very well in those classes, and can then act as a model student.

SI Leaders hold two, one hour study sessions every week. How SI differs from tutoring is that we don’t lecture or give out answers. We use what is known as the socratic method of teaching. The three main elements of this are: Redirecting Questions, Waittime, and Checking for Understanding.

Redirecting Questions

The goal of redirecting questions is to not answer questions directly. For example, if a student asks “What is a Queue” as opposed to telling them you may instead ask follow up questions like “What do you remember about queues from lecture?” “Can you remember how we used queues during problem solving”. But redirecting questions does not always involve asking questions. You can have students check their notes, you can ask other students if they know the answer, anything really that involves you not directly answering their questions.

Wait Time

Wait Time is simultaneously the simplest and hardest of the three methods. This is simply not saying anything. Just letting the room breathe a bit. Examples of this include not correcting students the moment they make a mistake, letting there be long periods of silence after you asked a question no one knows the answer to, or even not answering questions that students asked and instead waiting for other students to chime in. I would recommend bringing a water bottle drinking water to prevent yourself from constantly talking. Give the students a chance to do things before you try to help them.

Checking for Understanding

Checking for understanding is the easiest of the three, but arguably the most important. Checking for understanding is more than just asking your students if they understand. They almost always say yes, even if the answer is no. Good checking for understanding involves forcing the students to prove that they understand. This can be done by asking another, similar problem that tests the skills they should have just learned. It can also being asking questions that the students should know the answer to if they truly understand. It could even be having them explain why the answer they came up with is right. The important thing is that you don’t skip over this critical step.