The past 10 years have seen a major shift in English and English as a Second Language (ESL) placement and pedagogy in California's Community Colleges (CCC), driven by a developmental education reform movement known as acceleration. Popularized by the faculty-led California Acceleration Project (CAP), the acceleration movement focused on reducing…

Can a class assignment covering the reading help students do better in an introductory chemistry class for nonmajors? Two sections of the same course have been compared where one section had a reading assignment that "forced" the students to interact with the text while the other class had the typical homework, quiz assignments, and…

Instructors expect students to read before class to engage them in using higher-order thinking skills that are critical to performing in group work and engaging in discussions. As many instructors are aware, however, for various reasons many students don't read the assigned textbook. In this study, science news articles were used as prereadings to…

Research indicates that there has been a decline in college reading over the past decades, yet few studies have been conducted at community colleges. The aim of this exploratory study was to gain a broad view of what reading across the curriculum looks like at one urban community college from the perspectives of students and faculty. A survey was…

Across disciplines, faculty members face a common challenge of finding methods to get their students to complete assigned course readings. It becomes an even larger task to develop strategies whereby students are also engaging in deep reading that promotes critical thinking. Reading positively impacts students on a number of variables, and when…

If teachers are to be informed, aware actors in today's labyrinthine policy environment, they need to be knowledgeable about the issues and interests that so extensively impact their work lives. One skill needed to construct such a knowledge base is the ability to read strategically. This article is an account of an attempt to make learning…

College instructors often teach scientific thinking by asking students to review and analyze a primary research article. The main purpose of this study was to explore how classroom response systems (CRS) could help impact the quality of written analysis papers submitted for this assignment by students taking 100-level biology courses at a…

This research tested and evaluated how one method--Competency Points (CPs)--increased student success by enhancing engagement and motivation in community college English composition students. In 2005 I introduced Competency Points in my English Composition 1 classes, and began tracking how engaged and motivated students were to succeed as revealed…

In the fall of 2009, the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE) initiated a series of research programs designed to support the high school reform program, "Excellence for All," based on more than 20 years of research on the school reform programs of the countries with the most successful education programs worldwide. A…

This article reports findings from two studies assessing reading compliance among first semester freshmen at a small Midwestern two-year liberal arts university. The first study assessed reading compliance of students enrolled in two sections of First Year Seminar, finding that 46% of students reported that they read assignments, yet only 55% of…

In this article, the author describes a text preview assignment that she gave to her students. Students completing the text preview assignment use multimodal design, introducing classmates to texts in ways that motivate and inform their reading. She discusses using previews to set the stage for reading and discussion and to deepen personal…

This action research study is the culmination of several action cycles investigating cognitive information processing and learning strategies based on students approach to learning theory and assessing students' meta-cognitive learning, motivation, and reflective development suggestive of deep learning. The study introduces a reading…

This article reports the results of a factorial experiment that investigated the reactions of male and female students to a hypothetical English course offered at the community college level. The participants (N=136) consisted of students enrolled in English 101 courses at four community colleges in a southeastern state. The independent variables…