Developmental Students' Levels of Engagement and Student Success in Two-year Institutions


Book Description

The need for development education for first year community college students is a growing trend and has a variety of solutions. Engagement and retention of these students is vital to the success of the student and the college in which they attend. Taking developmental education courses should not be repetitive hurdles for a college student. This study is to establish the level of engagement of community college students who are enrolled in developmental education compared to students not enrolled in developmental education and their levels of success. The study evaluates administrative practices that engage developmental students in 2-year institutions. This study aims at increasing successful outcomes in developmental education students through research. The study of levels of engagement, retention, successful strategies and academic support may be the determining factor of success of developmental education students and the 2-year institution in which they are enrolled. Quantitative analysis will determine if there are significant differences in the engagement levels among first year developmental education students versus first year non-developmental college students within 2-year institutions and what institutional practices or academic support initiatives support developmental students' engagement in 2-year institutions. The instrument used was the 2009 SENSE (Survey of Entering Student Engagement). This tool assists colleges to focus on the "front door" of the students' college experience. This study uses an independent sample t-test to analyze the responses of students currently enrolled in developmental education courses versus students enrolled in non-developmental courses. The SENSE Survey was administered to students at 120 member community colleges during the fourth and fifth week of the fall 2009 semester. Fall 2009 was the first national administration of the survey. A 20-year community college system in suburban Houston, TX was specifically examined. This study determines the significance of implementation of successful programs and academic support procedures to enhance the college experiences and performance of students enrolled in developmental education, increases more efficient use of college resources, and assists students to complete developmental courses to persist into college level courses.




Student Success in College


Book Description

Student Success in College describes policies, programs, and practices that a diverse set of institutions have used to enhance student achievement. This book clearly shows the benefits of student learning and educational effectiveness that can be realized when these conditions are present. Based on the Documenting Effective Educational Practice (DEEP) project from the Center for Postsecondary Research at Indiana University, this book provides concrete examples from twenty institutions that other colleges and universities can learn from and adapt to help create a success-oriented campus culture and learning environment.




Helping Sophomores Succeed


Book Description

Helping Sophomores Succeed offers an in-depth, comprehensive understanding of the common challenges that arise in a student's second year of college. Sponsored by the University of South Carolina's National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience® and Students in Transition, this groundbreaking book offers an examination of second-year student success and satisfaction using both quantitative and qualitative measures from national research findings. Helping Sophomores Succeed serves as a foundation for designing programs and services for the second-year student population that will help to promote retention, academic and career development, and personal transition and growth. Praise for Helping Sophomores Succeed "Lost, lonely, stressed, pressured, unsupported, frequently indecisive, and invisible, many sophomores fall off the radar of campus educators at a time when they may most be seeking purpose, meaning, direction, intellectual challenge, and intellectual capacity building. The fine scholars who focused educators on the first-year and senior transitions have done it again?a magnificent book to focus on the sophomore year!" ?Susan R. Komives, College Student Personnel Program, University of Maryland "For years, student-centered institutions have front-loaded resources to promote student success in the first college year. This volume is rich with instructive ideas for how to sustain this important work in the second year of college." ?George D. Kuh, Chancellor's Professor and director, Indiana University Center for Postsecondary Research "A pioneering work, this brilliant text explores in practical and meaningful ways the all but neglected sophomore-year experience, when students face critical choices about their major, their profession, their life purpose." ?Betty L. Siegel, president emeritus, Kennesaw State University? "All members of the campus community?faculty, student affairs educators, staff, and students?will benefit from learning about the unique challenges of the second college year. The book provides research and best practices to help educators and students craft an integrated, comprehensive approach to helping second-year students succeed." ?Marcia Baxter Magolda, distinguished professor, Educational Leadership, Miami University The National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience® and Students in Transition supports and advances efforts to improve student learning and transitions into and through higher education by providing opportunities for the exchange of practical, theory-based information and ideas.




Redesigning America’s Community Colleges


Book Description

In the United States, 1,200 community colleges enroll over ten million students each year—nearly half of the nation’s undergraduates. Yet fewer than 40 percent of entrants complete an undergraduate degree within six years. This fact has put pressure on community colleges to improve academic outcomes for their students. Redesigning America’s Community Colleges is a concise, evidence-based guide for educational leaders whose institutions typically receive short shrift in academic and policy discussions. It makes a compelling case that two-year colleges can substantially increase their rates of student success, if they are willing to rethink the ways in which they organize programs of study, support services, and instruction. Community colleges were originally designed to expand college enrollments at low cost, not to maximize completion of high-quality programs of study. The result was a cafeteria-style model in which students pick courses from a bewildering array of choices, with little guidance. The authors urge administrators and faculty to reject this traditional model in favor of “guided pathways”—clearer, more educationally coherent programs of study that simplify students’ choices without limiting their options and that enable them to complete credentials and advance to further education and the labor market more quickly and at less cost. Distilling a wealth of data amassed from the Community College Research Center (Teachers College, Columbia University), Redesigning America’s Community Colleges offers a fundamental redesign of the way two-year colleges operate, stressing the integration of services and instruction into more clearly structured programs of study that support every student’s goals.




Activity Systems Analysis Methods


Book Description

In the last two decades, there has been growing interest in pursuing theoretical paradigms that capture complex learning situations. Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) is one of several theoretical frameworks that became very popular among educational researchers because it conceptualizes individuals and their environment as a holistic unit of analysis. It assumes a non-dualistic ontology and acknowledges the complexities involved in human activity in natural settings. Recently, reputable journals such as the American Psychologist, Educational Psychologist, and Educational Researcher that are targeted for a wide-range of audience have included articles on CHAT. In many of such articles, CHAT has been referred to as social constructivism, sociocultural theory, or activity theory. Activity systems analysis is one of the popular methods among CHAT researchers for mapping complex human interactions from qualitative data. However, understanding the methods involved in activity systems analysis is a challenging task for many researchers. This difficulty derives from several reasons. First the original texts of CHAT are in Russian and there have been numerous authors who report on the difficulties of reconciling translation problems of the works of original authors’ such as Vygotsky and Leontiev. Second, in North America activity systems analysis has deviated from the Russian scholars’ intentions and Engeström’s original work using the triangle model to identify tensions to overcome and bring about sociopolitical change in participant practices. Third, to this date there are numerous publications on the theoretical background of activity theory and studies reporting the results of using activity systems analysis for unpacking qualitative data sets, but there have been no methodological publications on how researchers engage in activity systems analysis. Thus, there is a dearth of literature in both book and journal publications that guide researchers on the methodological issues involving activity systems analysis.




High-impact Educational Practices


Book Description

This publication¿the latest report from AAC&U¿s Liberal Education and America¿s Promise (LEAP) initiative¿defines a set of educational practices that research has demonstrated have a significant impact on student success. Author George Kuh presents data from the National Survey of Student Engagement about these practices and explains why they benefit all students, but also seem to benefit underserved students even more than their more advantaged peers. The report also presents data that show definitively that underserved students are the least likely students, on average, to have access to these practices.




College Student Development


Book Description

Prepares readers to meet the needs of an increasingly diverse college student population This is a timely and comprehensive overview of key theories of student development that illustrates their application across a range of student services with diverse student populations. It is distinguished by its focus on nontraditional student populations including adults changing careers, parents, veterans, and international students. The book examines relevant theories of cognitive, ethical, moral, and personality development and theories of identity development in terms of ethnicity, gender, and ability. Also covered are theories relevant to disability issues, LGBT identity issues, and to choice of career and major/degree. Unique to the text is information on how theories can be applied, beyond understanding individual students, to student groups and to guide the coordination of student affairs services across the campus. Engaging case vignettes immerse readers in diverse perspectives and demonstrate the application of theory to a wide range of student types and issues. The book covers the history and development of each theory along with its strengths and limitations. Also included are useful suggestions on how to best assist students with current challenges. Reflective questions concluding each chapter help students to reinforce information. An insightful text for courses in college student development in relevant graduate programs and for student affairs professionals who wish to enhance their abilities, this book reflects the realities of contemporary college student life and student affairs practices. Key Features: Applies student development theories primarily to non-traditional college students Presents chapter-opening/closing examples reflecting student diversity Explores the strengths and limitations of each theory Describes how theories can be applied in varied student affairs settings and in broader contexts of student affairs Includes instructor’s resources




Increasing Student Success in Developmental Mathematics


Book Description

The Board on Science Education and the Board on Mathematical Sciences and Analytics of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine convened the Workshop on Increasing Student Success in Developmental Mathematics on March 18-19, 2019. The Workshop explored how to best support all students in postsecondary mathematics, with particular attention to students who are unsuccessful in developmental mathematics and with an eye toward issues of access to promising reforms and equitable learning environments. The two-day workshop was designed to bring together a variety of stakeholders, including experts who have developed and/or implemented new initiatives to improve the mathematics education experience for students. The overarching goal of the workshop was to take stock of the mathematics education community's progress in this domain. Participants examined the data on students who are well-served by new reform structures in developmental mathematics and discussed various cohorts of students who are not currently well served - those who even with access to reforms do not succeed and those who do not have access to a reform due to differential access constraints. Throughout the workshop, participants also explored promising approaches to bolstering student outcomes in mathematics, focusing especially on research and data that demonstrate the success of these approaches; deliberated and discussed barriers and opportunities for effectively serving all students; and outlined some key directions of inquiry intended to address the prevailing research and data needs in the field. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussion of the workshop.




Handbook of Research on Student Engagement


Book Description

For more than two decades, the concept of student engagement has grown from simple attention in class to a construct comprised of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral components that embody and further develop motivation for learning. Similarly, the goals of student engagement have evolved from dropout prevention to improved outcomes for lifelong learning. This robust expansion has led to numerous lines of research across disciplines and are brought together clearly and comprehensively in the Handbook of Research on Student Engagement. The Handbook guides readers through the field’s rich history, sorts out its component constructs, and identifies knowledge gaps to be filled by future research. Grounding data in real-world learning situations, contributors analyze indicators and facilitators of student engagement, link engagement to motivation, and gauge the impact of family, peers, and teachers on engagement in elementary and secondary grades. Findings on the effectiveness of classroom interventions are discussed in detail. And because assessing engagement is still a relatively new endeavor, chapters on measurement methods and issues round out this important resource. Topical areas addressed in the Handbook include: Engagement across developmental stages. Self-efficacy in the engaged learner. Parental and social influences on engagement and achievement motivation. The engaging nature of teaching for competency development. The relationship between engagement and high-risk behavior in adolescents. Comparing methods for measuring student engagement. An essential guide to the expanding knowledge base, the Handbook of Research on Student Engagement serves as a valuable resource for researchers, scientist-practitioners, and graduate students in such varied fields as clinical child and school psychology, educational psychology, public health, teaching and teacher education, social work, and educational policy.




Understanding and Reducing College Student Departure


Book Description

Student departure is a long-standing problem to colleges and universities. Approximately 45 percent of students enrolled in two-year colleges depart during their first year, and approximately one out of four students departs from a four-year college or university. The authors advance a serious revision of Tinto's popular interactionalist theory to account for student departure, and they postulate a theory of student departure in commuter colleges and universities. This volume delves into the literature to describe exemplary campus-based programs designed to reduce student departure. It emphasizes the importance of addressing student departure through a multidisciplinary approach, engaging the whole campus. It proposes new models for nonresidential students and students from diverse backgrounds, and suggests directions for further research. Academic and student affairs administrators seeking research-based approaches to understanding and reducing student departure will profit from reading this volume. Scholars of the college student experience will also find it valuable in defining new thrusts in research on the student departure process.