We report the short- and longer-term impacts of offering a 1-credit introductory seminar to first-year chemical engineering students. Students who completed the seminar demonstrated a better awareness of the major, career opportunities, and academic success strategies than students who did not enroll in the seminar. A longer-term comparison showed…

The guided pathways model, comprising 14 different practices, is a framework for comprehensive, whole-college reform undertaken by community colleges to help all students choose, enter, progress through, and complete a program of study that enables them to secure sustaining-wage employment or transfer with junior standing in a major. Since its…

This report explores policies and practices on validation of non-formal and informal learning in the ETF's partner countries and presents the results of studies carried out in 16 countries in the period 2021-23. Countries increasingly invest in validation schemes (also known as recognition of prior learning) in an effort to give visibility to all…

Earning a college degree offers many benefits but requires time and money. Prior learning assessment (PLA) saves time and money by translating prior learning into college credit. This systematic literature review examined peer reviewed journal articles about PLA from the last decade. The research design used systematic literature review procedures…

Early college high schools (ECHS) in North Carolina are small public schools of choice on college campuses that seek to promote attaining postsecondary credits in high school, college readiness, and postsecondary enrollment for underrepresented groups. Evidence from randomized control trial (RCT) has shown positive effects of the ECHS model on…

Early college high schools (ECHSs) in North Carolina are small public schools of choice on college campuses that seek to promote attaining postsecondary credits in high school, college readiness, and postsecondary enrollment for underrepresented groups. Evidence from randomized control trials (RCTs) has shown positive effects of the ECHS model on…

Following up on an individual-level randomized controlled trial of a Dana Center Math Pathways (DCMP) model, this study assessed longer-term impacts on students' math completion, academic progress, and academic attainment. The version of the DCMP that was assessed in this study diversified the developmental and college-level math course content…

Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are an increasingly common research design for evaluating the effectiveness of community college (CC) interventions. However, when planning an RCT evaluation of a CC intervention, there is limited empirical information about what sized effects an intervention might reasonably achieve, which can lead to under- or…

Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are an increasingly common research design for evaluating the effectiveness of community college (CC) interventions. However, when planning an RCT evaluation of a CC intervention, there is limited empirical information about what sized effects an intervention might reasonably achieve, which can lead to under- or…

This study explores the historical construction of student volunteering in higher education (HE) and the implications of this process for present-day organisational structures and common understandings. This critical-historical analysis, which focuses on the Israeli HE field, draws from archival data spanning the 1970s-2000s, from two leading…

The purpose of this research was to investigate if the addition of extra credit affected the overall rate of attendance to synchronous lectures in an online asynchronous course, compared to courses in which no extra credit was offered. Further I investigated if the amount of extra credit made a difference to the rate of attendance. I collected…

Recent policy efforts have attempted to increase the number of dual enrollment courses offered within Career and Technical Education (CTE) pathways, and there is evidence to suggest that this practice is widespread. However, there is very little research on student participation in CTE dual enrollment and on its impacts. This study examines…

Higher education has seen an increase in first-year students who arrive with significant early college credit. There is a gap in research about how first-year seminars meet the transition needs of students with college-level experience obtained during high school. This qualitative study, guided by Schlossberg's (1989) transition theory, explored…

Data literacy skills are becoming critical in today's world as the quantity of data grows exponentially and becomes the 'currency' of power. In spring 2020, a team of two librarians piloted a new one-credit course in data literacy and data visualisation. This report explains the rationale behind the project and discusses the place of data literacy…

A recent revamping of a three-credit-hour course, which the library at Morehead State University has offered for more than two decades, prompted the authors to contemplate what it means to modernize information literacy instruction in a credit-bearing format. For the authors, this modernization meant both committing to asynchronous delivery and…