(343) That’s SLiCk! - A Learning Community Approach to Supplemental Instruction

Objective : Supplemental Instruction (SI) is a peer-led academic support program and a form of pre-remediation assistance. Yet, demands on students’ time must also be considered in the historical model. The objective of this pilot was to investigate if a weekly SI learning community (SLC) approach to decrease the learner time burden would be an effective alternative.

Methods: A team of peer leaders facilitated 13 SLC sessions supporting three first-year (PY1) pharmaceutical sciences courses in the 2022 fall semester. The SLC structure included three, 40-minute mini-sessions (one session per course) and met weekly. The leaders utilized a range of innovative active learning techniques to facilitate content review (e.g. role play, gamification). Data were analyzed and descriptive statistics were generated using Excel.

Results: The SLC approach reduced the PY1 learner time commitment by 50%. Over 90% of the PY1 cohort attended the SLC once during the semester and a one-fold increase was observed in learner attendance under the SLC model compared to the virtual SI sessions in the fall of 2021. Course performance trends between the SLC model and traditional SI strategies remained consistent.

Conclusions: The SLC model is a viable alternative to traditional SI implementation. Under the SLC model, demand on learner time is effectively reduced and attendance results support increased buy-in over remote SI approaches in the traditional model. The impact on academic performance was negligible compared to traditional methods. The pilot is limited in sample size at a single college of pharmacy. Secondary benefits like peer mentorship and connection/belonging need to be further investigated in the SLC model.