In response to strikingly low completion rates in public 2-year colleges, including for students who are well-prepared academically, most community colleges across the country offer student success courses as one approach to improving outcomes for students. Some colleges have begun to revise these courses in response to research indicating that…

The objective of this research is to investigate the effectiveness of a learning strategy using Maple in integral calculus. This research was conducted using a quasi-experimental nonequivalent control group design. One hundred engineering technology students at a technical university were chosen at random. The effectiveness of the learning…

Two-year college teachers face great difficulty when they teach the principle of operation of the bipolar junction transistor--a subject which forms the basis for electronics studies. The difficulty arises from both the complexity of the device and by the lack of adequate scientific background among the students. We, therefore, developed a unique…

Community college stakeholders are searching with increasing urgency for approaches with the potential to improve the success rates for community college students, particularly those in need of developmental education. "Learning communities," which place cohorts of students together in two or more courses for one semester, are a popular…

Nutrition-related messages inundate mass media advertisements in the United States but it is unclear as to how those messages affect a person's food selection behavior and awareness of nutrient and non-nutrient message content. This dissertation is a culmination of research examining the use of mass media (television and print) as a pedagogical…