Academically underprepared postsecondary students make up a large proportion of college campuses. Recent estimates indicate that up to 70 percent of incoming students at two-year community colleges and up to 40 percent of incoming students at four-year colleges enroll in developmental courses. There has been some criticism of the effectiveness of…

This article examines two course redesigns undertaken to improve student support, learning, and retention in the basic writing program at Oakland University, a doctoral research university in southeast Michigan, where support for developmental writers has fluctuated dramatically between nurture and neglect over the past fifty years. However,…

College and career readiness for all students includes supporting the needs of students with disabilities. Ensuring students with disabilities are college and career ready goes beyond academics and must include self-determination skill development. As schools adapt to the implementation of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and multi-tiered…

Although Language and Literacy research has become an impetus for change in the K-12 arena, Developmental and Adult Education practices have evolved little as a result of such inquiries. Driving instruction away from rote practice of discreet skills, educators have the opportunity to depart from deficit models of education and open up the…

Dissatisfaction with student success has caused a crisis in developmental education. Critics from both inside and outside the field question whether remedial courses really prepare students for future college work or even if they are properly part of the college mission. In this article, we review research and present information that suggests…

Offers suggestions for using folk tales from around the world and story-telling for classroom instruction. Because folk tales are ultimately about communication and the way people in a society interact, a multi-cultural class can make good use of them. Offers examples for application to language arts and social science courses. (Contains 9…

Three techniques for teaching effective reading--using students' textbooks, reading modules, and individual instructional packets--have proven successful in reducing reading time while improving comprehension skills for students in a reading and study skills course at a Texas university. Students assigned to the course use their content area…

The developmental program at the Community College of Philadelphia (CCP) has a stable core of teachers who value independence rather than conformity and who seek to transform deeply anxious students into students who love learning. The instructors' goals of improving basic skills, fostering independent thinking, and promoting greater knowledge and…

A study investigated the effects of computer-assisted instruction on the vocabulary development of college students enrolled in a developmental reading program at a two-year college of a metropolitan, midwestern university. The subjects were 41 entry level students, 98% of whom had never used computers as an instructional tool. The students were…

This publication contains seven peer-reviewed papers from a conference on college developmental education with the theme of student success. The papers are: (1) "Reversing the Academic Probation Dilemma" by John Foreman and Nancy Ann Rossi on programming for students on academic probation; (2) "Reading and Writing: Tools for Problem…

This guide is designed to offer interesting, authentic practice in reading college-level technical textbooks and periodical articles. The book contains actual reading assignments and strategies to help students improve comprehension and to develop metacognitive insight into their own reading processes. The guide is presented in three levels, each…