SI Leaders are “near peers”. SI Leaders are students themselves who have taken the class before and earned a high grade in the course. Faculty typically recommend the Leaders who facilitate their SI sessions. SI Leaders undergo a vigorous hiring and training process. SI Leaders attend the same class sessions with the students, taking notes and listening closely to the professor. SI Leaders prepare activities to help students understand difficult concepts and practice effective studying techniques for the course.

Fill out the referral form for SI Leaders/Tutors

Job description to share with SI Leader candidates:

SI leaders are strong UMKC students, who have at least a 3.0 overall GPA and B+ or better in the course they SI for. SI Leaders attend course lectures, so they can plan interactive activities to aid students with difficult material. They then facilitate this plan for students in the course in their weekly SI sessions. There are many benefits to being an SI Leader. You will gain leadership, organization, and critical thinking skills. You will hone your academic knowledge base and skills. You will form close relationships with faculty, UMKC staff, and fellow students. And you will have the satisfaction of helping others understand challenging material. SI leaders work 8-10 hours a week with pay starting at $12.30 per hour.

The SI program works with institutional research to identify courses with high DFW rates or a demonstrated impact on persistence and/or graduation rates. However, there are some academic units that choose to fund SI for courses that do not fall into these categories. If you are interested in learning more about having SI implemented in your course, please fill out the request form linked below.

• Recommend qualified candidates
• Provide approval for the SI Leader(s) for their course
• Communicate with their SI Leader(s) before and throughout the term in a mutually agreed manner (face to face, email, during office hours, etc.)
• Add SI session and leader information to course materials and learning management sites
• Encourage students to attend, and avoid the notion that only those students who do poorly in their course will benefit
  • Faculty can support SI by granting time for occasional in-class announcements and post information on the board/PowerPoint
• Ensure that SI Leaders are not requested to engage in work that would compromise the Leader’s neutrality for the course they are leading, including not:
  • Grading student work
  • Constructing test items
  • Creating assignments
  • Serving as a TA or serving in a TA-like role
  • Proctoring exams

The SI coordinator will send you the SI Leader's information (contact, session times, etc.) before the start of the term to be included with a sample statement like the one below:

SI sessions provide a fun, collaborative learning environment where you actively work with fellow classmates to assess your understanding, deepen your knowledge, and grow your skills in this course and beyond. SI is most effective for those who come regularly throughout the semester. Students should also download the RooLearning+ app to view the SI session schedule as well as tutoring options available for this course.

In general, the International Center for Supplemental Instruction (SI) discourages providing extra credit for attending SI sessions due to equity, anonymity, and data concerns.

However, the steps outlined below are an equitable option to providing extra credit for SI attendance, as not all students can attend SI sessions due to time conflicts. Additionally, these steps allow the SI program to maintain anonymity and run our end-of-term comparison reports without the extra credit impacting or skewing results.

1. Faculty let the SI coordinator know they are interested in pursuing the extra credit model.
2. Faculty communicate to students that at the end of the term any student attending SI or UMKC Tutoring will receive extra credit. The faculty can determine how much extra credit will be given for each visit and what the cap will be. Faculty will not be aware of who is using the services until the end of the semester and so the extra credit points will not be added onto the grade until the end of the semester. All ASM staff have been FERPA trained and can provide certificates.
3. Faculty will send their cumulative letter grades for everyone in the course to the SI coordinator. Students who wish not to have their visits to ASM shared with their faculty can opt-out of the program by emailing umkcasm@umkc.edu.
4. The SI coordinator will send back the cumulative list of all their students’ visits to any ASM service with no indication of which service they attended, so the faculty can add the extra credit as appropriate.