This three-article format dissertation presents a comprehensive examination of the 2017 Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE), focusing on its measurement properties across diverse community college student populations. Study 1 centered on the validity of the internal structure of CCSSE. Exploratory and confirmatory factor…

This study aimed to observe measurement invariance between community college students and university students in response to the Community of Inquiry (CoI) Survey instrument. Most studies of the CoI survey instruments have recorded and validated the instruments considering undergraduate or graduate students. This study sought to validate and prove…

Objective: This study examines whether there are differences among first-generation and continuing-generation community college students in the importance they place on achieving college-related goals and difficulties they face from college- and other life-related challenges. Methods: Data were drawn from the "Community College Libraries and…

Objective/Research Question: This paper reports on data collected in a multi-year National Science Foundation grant project involving a professional development (PD) model built to support community college faculty as change agents (CAs). The research question was: How do disciplinary communities of practice (CoP) emerge among community college…

Since the early 1900s, scholars, police, and the public have debated and discussed the role of higher education in policing. The questions of whether police officers should have experience in higher education and how that will influence job outcomes have not fully been answered to this day. The purpose of this research study is to examine the…

This report presents the results from the third biennial Texas OER Landscape Survey, administered in 2023 and commissioned by the Digital Higher Education Consortium of Texas (DigiTex) and the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB). The survey aimed to explore the open educational resources (OER) landscape, policies, and practices at…

Approximately 450 community colleges nationally are part of formal statewide or national initiatives to implement guided pathways reforms to improve student success, and many other colleges are implementing guided pathways practices on their own. Because guided pathways is a whole-college reform--and because it takes several years to fully…

"How Clear Is Their Path? Guided Career Pathways and Community College Students" explores how prepared community college students are to meet their career goals. Over 90 percent of students responding to the 2023 Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE) indicated they had chosen a career path. But many of those respondents…

This document provides the technical appendix that accompanies the study, "Student Experiences in English Corequisite Remediation versus a Standalone Developmental Education Course: Findings from an Experimental Study in Texas Community Colleges. Research Report. RR-A810-1" (ED612531). Between fall 2016 and fall 2018, the authors…

Roughly 40% of first-time freshman enter college at two-year institutions (Ginder, et al., 2015) and between roughly 70 to 80% of students enrolled at two-year institutions report the intent to continue their education to earn a bachelor's degree (Jenkins & Fink, 2016; U.S. Department of Education, 2001). However, less than half of the…

Adult students constitute a large and increasing proportion of community college enrollment across the United States. For personal, economic, and sociological reasons, the success of these students is vital to the students themselves, the institutions they attend, and society as a whole. The purpose of this dissertation was to examine results from…

Safety practices impact production. The teaching of safety practices is impacted by the training of educators, the attitude of superiors, the perception of the importance of safety, and acquired training in adult learning methods. This study examined administrators' and instructors' current proficiency and dedication to safety training and adult…

There are numerous widely recognized advantages to pursuing post-secondary education. Yet colleges offer students different resources and educational experiences, which may introduce inequality in the returns to college enrollment. This dissertation uses nationally representative data from the Educational Longitudinal Study (ELS:2002) and the 1997…

In 2022, a subset of the Human Anatomy and Physiology Society (HAPS) Curriculum & Instruction Committee administered the third offering of the HAPS lab survey. This survey included a three-part framework of (1) demographics, (2) lab activities and learning outcomes, and, (3) the impact of a global pandemic on instruction. Here we report on…

Although the government collects data on the state origins of undergraduate students at each college, no publicly available data exist for where graduates of specific colleges end up, even though this information is vital for local economic and workforce development and estimating the state and local return on public funding of higher education.…