Background
More African-American students attend Tidewater Community College (TCC) than any other private or public college or university in the Commonwealth of Virginia. TCC also has the largest number of students receiving financial aid among the 23 public community colleges in the state.
With campuses in Chesapeake, Virginia Beach, Norfolk, and Portsmouth, TCC is committed not only to providing its 40,000 students with access to higher education, but to successful student achievement. It has long offered several special intervention programs to help its students attain their educational goals.
Achieving the Dream Interventions
Supplemental Instruction (SI) is an academic assistance program that uses collaborative learning strategies such as regularly scheduled, out-of-class, peer-facilitated study sessions. SI avoids the remedial stigma often attached to traditional academic assistance programs since it does not focus on high-risk students, but on high-risk classes. SI is open to all students in the targeted course, making pre-screening of students unnecessary. Since the SI program begins the first week of the academic term, the program provides academic assistance during the critical, initial six-week period of class.
The SI leader introduces the program during the first class session and works with students to establish a schedule for the SI sessions. Attendance is voluntary, students of varying abilities participate, and no effort is made to segregate students based on academic ability.
Results
Students enrolled in SI-supported gatekeeper sections have been found to be more successful than students in sections with no SI-support.
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