Research and data show that developmental education has been a stumbling block for the majority of community college students in pursuing their higher education degree. Students can spend several semesters to complete developmental math requirements in order to take a first college-level credit-bearing math course for their degree. Many colleges…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of co-requisite education on gateway mathematics, predicated on the Reinforced Instruction for Student Excellence (RISE) model, at a large urban community college (LUCC) in North Carolina. The research study explored the success rates in gateway mathematics courses in relation to the…

Lesson Study (LS) is a structured, collaborative professional development approach that gives instructors a framework for actively investigating how to improve student learning in their classrooms. Despite evidence of LS improving teacher practice and student learning in K-12 settings, there have been few documented examples of its use among…

Community colleges continue to operate in a society of accountability and efficiencies. Throughout the country, states have implemented performance-based funding and completion agendas while also tightening or restricting funding for higher education. The state of Ohio has implemented one of the boldest performance funding plans in the country…

Community college online mathematics courses have the highest course attrition rates among all subject matters and degree levels. The problem could be addressed through professional development and assessment tools generated with the core foundations of TPACK framework--integrated knowledge between technology, pedagogy, and content. Using the…

This paper advances a model describing how peer assessment supports self-assessment. Although prior research demonstrates that peer assessment promotes self-assessment, the connection between these two activities is underspecified. This model, the assessment cycle, draws from theories of self-assessment to elaborate how learning takes place…

To support the long-term success of underprepared students, many community colleges are experimenting with accelerated developmental education models, which allow students to complete remediation and enroll in college-level math and English within a shorter time frame. This study examines three developmental acceleration programs, including two in…

Sometimes the best mathematics problems come from the most unexpected situations. Last summer, a Corvette raced down a local quarter-mile drag strip. The driver, a family member, provided the spectators with time and distance-traveled data from his time slip and asked "Can you calculate how many seconds it took me to go from 0 to 60…

At community colleges, student preparedness for college-level work is a significant initial barrier. Over 70% of community college students are reported to be inadequately prepared for college mathematics. Because students need to pass college-level math in order to enroll in subsequent courses required for their majors or to complete general…

The purpose of this study was to examine the experiences of students enrolled in a basic skills math class at a California community college and the role of the peer model in informing their college-going behaviors. There is significant interest in increasing the number of students who complete basic skills courses and make progress towards a…

Two related themes currently dominate discourse on open-access colleges, particularly community colleges: increasing college-going and degree attainment and improving the performance of postsecondary institutions with respect to producing graduates. Largely missing from this discourse, however, is cogency concerning the innumerable ways in which…

To achieve the vision of mathematics set forth in "Crossroads" ("AMATYC," 1995), students must experience mathematics as a sensemaking endeavor that informs their world. Embedding the study of mathematics into the real world is a challenge, particularly because it was not the way that many of us learned mathematics in the first place. This article…

Traditional college algebra courses focus almost exclusively on power functions such as y = x[superscript 2] and y = x[superscript 3] rather than the more general y = x[superscript p]. However, it is the more general form that is the basis of the mathematical models that arise throughout the natural sciences in a host of unexpected and highly…