Date: 5/10/2011

Benj Kanters, associate professor in the Audio Arts + Acoustics Department, was recognized on May 6th for his long standing involvement with the College’s Supplemental Instruction Program (SI). Mr. Kanters has been an active collaborator of the Learning Studio in the development, sustainability, and, most importantly, evaluation efforts for the SI program.

The evaluation results of SI in his courses are highly positive, demonstrating a promising correlation between SI session attendance and students’ level of achievement. In addition, Mr. Kanters has enthusiastically collaborated with the Learning Studio and the Office of Institutional Research to expand the SI program’s evaluation efforts to include learning outcomes. The learning outcomes developed are communicated at the beginning of the term and then assessed at the end, in a process that has helped advance SI evaluation.

“I had heard about supplemental instruction from my daughter, who was a calculus SI leader at Case Western,” said Kanters. “When I was told that I could have the same program tied to our 130-seat Introduction to Audio Theory class, I said, ‘Sign me up!’”

After several years of implementation and fine-tuning, in collaboration with The Learning Studio’s Lynn Levy, Julie Redmond, and Sharon Silverman, Benj asserts that “…the SI program’s weekly peer-led discussion section is probably the single-most valuable student learning support activity for this class.”

Left: Benj Kanters, AA+A Associate Chair and Lynn Levy, Coordinator, Supplemental Instruction, Learning Studio. Right: Lynn Levy, Julie Redmond, Assistant Vice President for Academic Support, Learning Studio, and Benj Kanters.