Bringing metacognition onto college campuses is a transformational experience for students and faculty as well as their institutions. In this chapter, we share a collection of metacognitive activities and describe their value in and outside of the classroom based upon our experiences in the community college setting. These activities are easily…

Maintaining a learning community's status as a high-impact practice involves understanding the factors that contribute to their effectiveness in increasing retention, engagement, and overall academic success. By creating diverse small groups in which students are encouraged to support one another academically, both during and outside of class, the…

"Transformational Learning in Community Colleges" details the profound social and emotional change that nontraditional and historically underserved students undergo when they enter community college. Drawing on case study material and student observations, the book outlines the systematic supports that two-year institutions must put in…

A community college's success hinges in large part on the effectiveness of its teaching faculty, no more so than in times of major organizational change. However, any large-scale foundational shift requires institutional buy-in, with the onus on leadership to create an environment where everyone is working together toward the same endpoint.…

In this essay, Michael Satterfield recounts his experiences as a student in and outside of prison. His narrative exposes the challenges faced by one person in pursuit of an education, and recounts his early educational experiences as well as his participation in a college-in-prison program. He also describes his journey to a four-year college and…

Faculty eager to transform their teaching often have a difficult time understanding the learning literature and then integrating it into their teaching, in part because neuroeducation concepts such as constructivism, transfer, misconceptions, and metacognition are not part of their existing knowledge. Examples of these concepts in the literature…

This brief focuses on the efforts of the nursing programs at Phillips Community College of the University of Arkansas (PCCUA) to reduce time to completion, increase achievement, and enhance student support. To accomplish these goals, PCCUA involved healthcare providers, faculty, students, college curriculum committees, the Accreditation Commission…

At a large, urban community college located in the Northeastern United States, a group of faculty interested in helping students assume agency in their own learning used the methodology of Collaborative Inquiry (CI) as a way to examine the factors that help or hinder this process. Unexpected was the epistemological shift they underwent as a result…

From 1998 to 2008, the Dallas County Community College District (DCCCD) offered its employees a variety of options for formation, a type of reflective practice. The district encompasses 10 locations, seven of them independently accredited colleges. Formation is based primarily on Parker Palmer's model for Circles of Trust as described in "A…