Scheduling SI Sessions (for Liberal Arts courses)
As an SI leader, you will hold hour‐long SI sessions twice a week during the semester starting the second week of class. It is up to you to decide when and where the SI sessions will take place, using the following guidelines.
- Schedule sessions between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. Monday‐Thursday
- Schedule sessions so there is no intervening lecture between the two sessions (so the two sessions will cover the same material).
Reserve the rooms that the sessions will be held in. For general purpose classrooms, call Room Scheduling at 512‐475‐7600
- Decide what kind of room you want
- Know how many students you expect to attend the SI sessions on a typical day and find a room with an appropriate capacity
- Think about the furniture and media capabilities you will need to effectively execute your sessions
- Know what area of campus (or specific building) you’d like the rooms in
- Have specific dates you’d like to reserve the rooms for. Make sure to let them know that you want these rooms for the entire semester, not just a single occurrence.
- After you reserve the room, check it out in person
Publicize the schedule.
- Email your SLCC contact and your SI Supervisor
- Alert the students
- Make an announcement at the beginning of lecture for the first few class days
- Posting the information on the class Blackboard site
- Email all the students (with the permission of the professor)
There may also be departmental rooms available to hold your SI session in, rather than general purpose classrooms. To reserve those, you will need to contact your specific department.
Attendance
Keeping accurate attendance records for your SI sessions is a critical part of your job. Please follow these guidelines.
- Bring a copy of the roster with you to each session and pass it around the room so students can initial next to their name. If a student’s name isn’t listed on the roster, ask them to write their name and EID at the end of the list.
- Bring the roster to your next weekly meeting and hand it to your SI supervisor
- If at any point you want to see what the cumulative attendance for your sessions looks like, you can access it via Webspace
Marketing SI
Initially, your students may not know exactly what to make of the voluntary nature of SI. Here are ways you can encourage them to attend.
- Include the time and place of your SI sessions every time you communicate with students
- Remind students of SI’s statistically proven positive impact on student grades in nearly every supported course
- Give out SI promotional materials
- Ask your instructor for two minutes of lecture each week to describe upcoming SI sessions and explain how they will help students improve their performance
- Remind your professor to refer students to the SI groups
- Invite your instructor to an SI session
- Present student work from SI in lecture to demonstrate to your class that students who attend SI get more individual attention and practice time
- Use email and Blackboard to communicate with your students each week about the topics and activities of upcoming SI sessions