Online courses provide flexible learning opportunities, but research suggests that students may learn less and persist at lower rates compared to face-to-face settings. However, few studies have investigated more distal effects of online education. In this study, we analyzed 6 years of institutional data for three cohorts of students in 13 large…

This article discusses "Rhetoric of Storytelling," a course that looks at the purposes of storytelling across different rhetorical traditions, beginning with Ancient Greek and Roman traditions and traversing African American, Indigenous Latin American, American Indian, feminist, and Latinx rhetorical traditions. The course operates from…

This teaching note presents a required proseminar for sociology and criminology and justice studies majors. The American Sociological Association reported that about half of U.S. sociology program curriculum integrate career resources and about one-third offer a course. On a spring 2021 proseminar pilot self-assessment pretest, 18 students…

This report is focused on both introducing corequisite support to institutional leaders looking for new approaches to addressing remediation and offering new insights that can deepen practice for those who are already at work implementing the model. Following previous reports on the corequisite model, "No Room for Doubt" outlines a…

In an effort to make math courses more relevant and improve success rates in college math, various organizations and colleges developed a new model of math education that has come to be called "math pathways." Math pathways enable students to take different paths through the math curriculum, depending on their course of study. With math…

For many students, developmental education is the largest obstacle to college success, hindering progress before they ever enroll in a college-level course. Postsecondary practitioners and researchers have been re-examining and challenging many traditional elements of developmental education from placement strategies to the sequence of courses…

The primary goal of the California State University's (CSU) Graduation Initiative 2025 (GI 2025) is to reduce time to degree. The results of a survey and focus groups involving students at three CSU campuses, undertaken by the Education Insights Center (EdInsights) on behalf of the CSU Student Success Network, indicate that this goal is consistent…

There is growing concern that the remedial math courses taken by most community college students unnecessarily divert some students from earning a degree. Anecdotes of students who thought they had completed their math requirements in high school only to have remedial courses delay their progress through college are common. In addition, research…

Since the mid-20th century, the standard U.S. high school and college math curriculum has been based on two years of algebra and a year of geometry, preparing students to take classes in pre-calculus followed by calculus. Students' math pursuits have been differentiated primarily by how far or how rapidly they proceed along a clearly defined…

The conventional algebra-intensive math curriculum commonly dictates students' options for entering and completing college, including their ability to transfer from two-year to four-year institutions. The assumption that higher-level algebra is necessary for college success has led some equity advocates to promote algebra for all students. Nearly…

Community colleges across the United States face a difficult challenge. On the one hand, they are "open access" institutions, with a mission to serve students from all backgrounds and at varying levels of college readiness. On the other hand, they must uphold high academic standards in order to maintain accreditation and prepare students…

University of the Pacific is a private, comprehensive university with a College of Arts and Sciences and six professional schools, and with a population of more than four thousand students on its main campus in the ethnically diverse central valley city of Stockton, California. The signature component of Pacific's general education program is the…

The Rostrum is a quarterly publication of the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges. The following articles are included in this issue: (1) An SLO Terminology Glossary: A Draft in Progress by Lesley Kawaguchi; (2) A Tale of Two Data Elements by Mark Wade Lieu; (3) Sustainability and the Academic Senate by David Beaulieu and Don…