The C4 Scholar Program (Cross Curricular Career Community) is an interdisciplinary, multi-semester learning community for first-year developmental students at a comprehensive midwestern state university. Faculty members from two units, Retention & Student Success and Arts and Sciences, created the program to address a persistent gap in…

Student Services support, including learning skills assistance, can be integral in empowering learners. First-year students are expected to be self-directed in their learning, yet may have neither been challenged nor experienced negative consequences for a lack of perseverance. Academic skills professionals can be partners with teaching faculty in…

Due to concerns about student performance in Intermediate Accounting I, our Department of Accounting established an Intermediate Readiness Committee in the spring of 2006 to create a developmental program for students entering Intermediate I, with the goal of improving performance in that course. Over the next two years, the Committee established…

The Community College Pathways initiative consists of two pathways, Statway® and Quantway®, that accelerate post-secondary students' progress through their developmental mathematics sequence and a college-level course for credit. Launched in 2011, the Pathways have been remarkably successful, helping thousands of students achieve success in…

The purpose of the current study was to determine if three community colleges were serving developmental education students in an effective and cost-efficient manner, make observations about the developmental education demographics, and conclude if Senate Bill 162 (SB 162) increased the percentage of college ready students who participated in…

The FOCUS (Fundamentals of Conceptual Understanding and Success) Co-Requisite Model Intervention (FOCUS Intervention) for College Algebra was developed as part of the Developmental Education Demonstration Projects (DEDP) in Texas. The program was designed to use multiple services, courses, and best practices to support student completion of a…

This research analyzed linked high-quality state data from K-12, adult education, and postsecondary state datasets in order to better understand the association between student demographics and successful completion of a postsecondary program. Due to the relatively small sample size compared to the large number of features, we analyzed the data…

A paired course model for under-prepared college students incorporates a dual instructional approach, academic skill building and lifelong learning development, to help students do more academically and become stronger lifelong learners. In a reading support course, students improved their reading skills and applied them directly to the paired…

Background: Annually, American colleges and universities provide developmental education (DE) to millions of underprepared students; however, evaluation estimates of DE benefits have been mixed. Objectives: Using a prototypic exemplar of DE, our primary objective was to investigate the utility of a replicative evaluative framework for assessing…

Recently in Ontario, Canada, the College Math Project brought to light startling data on the achievement of students in Ontario's College of Applied Arts and Technology System related to their performance in first-year mathematics courses: one-third of the students had failed their first-year mathematics course or were at risk of not completing…

Faculty at a two-year community/technical college undertook a project in the spring 2010 semester to incorporate more intensive and intrusive academic advising into the Freshman Seminar (COL 105) course. A study was undertaken in which 14 sections of COL 105 were divided into an experimental group (taught by specially-trained instructors who…

When Valencia College became the first recipient of the Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence last month, an unsung sector earned uncommon recognition. Now that the speeches are over and the prize money has been awarded, the Aspen Institute is sharing early lessons from its yearlong effort to determine the top community college in the…

This article describes the evaluation of separate discussion sections for special admissions students participating in a developmental program and attending an introduction to psychology course. In year one, the special admissions students were segregated into separate small enrollment discussion sections within the larger course. In year two,…

Nationwide, close to 40 million adults lack a high school diploma or a General Educational Development (GED) credential. About a quarter of high school freshmen do not graduate in four years, and while many high school dropouts eventually do attend GED preparation classes, too few ever pass the GED exam or go on to college. Students with only a…

Although education has been a part of all cultures since the beginning of existence, it is constantly evolving. As educators seek to instill in their students the significance of lifelong learning, they also seek opportunities to learn and improve. Greater pressures and demands than ever before are being placed on educators. When Handley High…