The number of undergraduates in the United States has increased by more than 30 percent since 2000, with two-year institutions absorbing the majority of new students. At the same time, outstanding student-loan debt has grown nationwide, reaching $1.4 trillion in 2018. Although the federal student-loan program exists to provide such resources, the…

There are many examples of hybrid simulation models in healthcare education which are designed to simulate specific scenarios. However, there appears to be a need for a cost effective and configurable hybrid simulation platform which can be used by educators of various healthcare disciplines to simulate different scenarios. The purpose of this…

Study abroad can be a crucial opportunity for learners to thrive in a global, interconnected economy. While overseas study programs prepare participants for the worldwide workforce, community college students are at a disadvantage if these journeys are not integrated into the classroom experience. As many two-year institutions lack a dedicated…

Colleges throughout the United States are evaluating the effectiveness of their strategies to place entering students into college-level or developmental education courses. Developmental, or remedial, courses are designed to advance the reading, writing, and math skills of students who are deemed academically underprepared for college-level…

Virtually all community colleges and more than 90 percent of public four-year colleges use the results of placement tests--either alone or in concert with other information--to determine whether students are ready for college-level coursework or need remedial help in math or English. Evidence suggests that placement tests do a poor job of…

We aimed to compare the findings of three research designs to bracket effect estimates of a strongly worded warning letter delivered by certified mail to students on academic probation. We embedded an experiment within a regression discontinuity design and calculated two achievement estimates, average GPA and percentage of students remaining on…

The cost of college course materials has increased dramatically in recent years. Traditional publishers advocate the use of lower-cost digital and custom editions, but both options have limitations in their ability to save students money (Senack & Donoghue, 2016). Open-educational resources (OER) are openly-licensed materials that may be used…

Many incoming college students are referred to remedial programs in math or English based on scores they earn on standardized placement tests. Yet research shows that some students assigned to remediation based on test scores would likely succeed in a college-level course in the same subject area without first taking a remedial course if given…

The purpose of this research study, which employed a quantitative research design, was to determine if there was a difference in the grades achieved by students who were enrolled in an entry-level Foundations of Education course using Open Educational Resources (OER) versus the grades achieved by students who used textbooks in other course…

Community college students often lack an academic plan to guide their choices of coursework to achieve their educational goals, in part because counseling departments typically lack the capacity to advise students at scale. This randomized controlled trial tests the impact of guaranteed access to one of two alternative counseling sessions (group…

Community colleges face challenges in developing, managing, and sustaining quality online courses. Some colleges are experimenting with the development and implementation of a master course design using quality metrics standards and course rubrics to maintain general education online course enrollment growth. Schmidt, Hodge, and Tschida (2013)…

The purpose of this study was to determine how policies regarding remedial education can influence the experiences of students who identify as low socioeconomic (SES) Native American women at a Midwestern community college. This study proposed to use interpretive policy analysis and phenomenological qualitative research to learn more about how low…

Purpose: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation launched the Next Generation Courseware Challenge (NGCC) in 2014 to address the limited availability of affordable, high-quality adaptive courseware to postsecondary students. SRI International was retained to evaluate the NGCC initiative as a whole and to conduct impact studies for the NGCC…

This report presents the findings of the cost-benefit analysis of Accelerating Opportunity, an initiative designed to help adults with low basic skills earn industry-recognized credentials in high-growth occupations and succeed in the labor market. It compares the value of the benefits associated with AO--principally labor market benefits--with…

In 2010, Hillsborough Community College (HCC), a large multicampus institution in Tampa, Florida, worked with MDRC to create the Mathematics Access Performance Scholarship (MAPS) program to help academically underprepared community college students succeed in developmental math. MAPS provides an incentive for low-income students referred to…