Learning communities have been a part of the higher educational landscape since the 1980s. Despite their widespread use, research regarding their effectiveness with enhancing retention is sparse. This study describes a freshmen curricular learning community linking courses required for all business majors. Retention for students taking courses in…

Strides toward Native American self-governance and determination have led to significant initiatives designed to protect and preserve community traditional practice and participation. A specific focus of this paper examines potential factors that affect Native American students' post-college aspirations with respect to participation and support…

Research Findings: Bug-in-ear coaching implemented under highly controlled situations has a promising research base. Yet few researchers have examined its effects when implemented within less controlled environments using authentic professional development conditions. The purpose of this study was to examine the implementation and effects of…

Many community colleges consider non-academic supports as a way to improve student retention and achievement. Past studies on the effects of coaching, mentoring, advising, and other non-academic supports yielded evidence for the effectiveness of these interventions to promote student outcomes. In addition, some suggested that the effects were…

Educators, policymakers, and institutions have worked for decades to increase rates of college graduation, but about half of students who enter college drop out without completing a bachelor's degree. Although the rate of student attrition is higher in the United States than in any other industrialized nation, about 30% of U.S. students will drop…

Community college students face special challenges that can impede their academic progress, resulting in lower grades and persistence than students in selective four-year colleges. Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, New York, successfully addresses these challenges with learning communities: small cohorts of students in a blocked program…

This study extends and makes unique methodological contributions to research on the impact of learning communities (LCs) on community college students. Much of the previous research was short-term, lacked adequate comparison groups, and focused on four-year college students. This four-year study controlled for instructor-related variables by…

Research examining diversifying college enrollment patterns has gradually gained attention in recent years. Yet, few studies have focused on postsecondary co-enrollment and its different forms such as co-enrolling at institutions of the same level (lateral co-enrollment) and attending a 4- and 2-year institution simultaneously (vertical…

For more than a century, community colleges have provided a postsecondary education alternative to the traditional, 4-year university. Enrolling disproportionate numbers of both disadvantaged and nontraditional students, the community college sector has seen unparalleled gains in enrollment over the past few decades. Along with these increases in…

The article examines the results of two quasi-experimental studies of the implementation and impact of the Literacy Design Collaborative (LDC), an intervention designed to support secondary teachers' transition to Common Core State Standards in English language arts. The first study examines LDC implementation by eighth-grade social studies and…

Whether through the use of online-only or hybrid/blended formats, colleges and universities across the country are increasingly utilizing online platforms as a medium for the delivery of instruction. At the same time, we know little about how student learning outcomes are related to students' engagement with online instructional formats. In…

Communities In Schools, Inc. (CIS) is a nationwide initiative designed to connect needed community resources with schools to help students, particularly those identified as at-risk, successfully learn, stay in school, and prepare for life. As part of a comprehensive 5-year national evaluation of CIS, ICF International conducted a school-level…

Vocabulary acquisition is central to language learning, and many instructors believe that technology can facilitate this core activity. While numerous websites and apps offer language-learning activities and games, not all provide evidence that their content and techniques are effective. VocabularySpellingCity (VSC), however, commissioned a study…

Community college students are often placed in developmental math courses based on the results of a single placement test. However, concerns about accurate placement have recently led states and colleges across the country to consider using other measures to inform placement decisions. While the relationships between college outcomes and such…

Using a dataset containing nearly 500,000 courses taken by over 40,000 community and technical college students in Washington State, this study examines the performance gap between online and face-to-face courses and how the size of that gap differs across student subgroups and academic subject areas. While all types of students in the study…