Workforce practitioners within community colleges are increasingly faced with pressures from business and industry to offer academic and career oriented programs targeted to the workforce needs of local industry. Most recently, there has been a call from both industry and the White House for community colleges to complete more students in…

A convergent mixed methods research design addressed the extent of benefit obtained from reading culturally inclusive prompts (i.e., four brief essays written by Latino authors) to improve essay writing in a developmental (pre-college) English course. Participants were 45 Latino students who provided quantitative data. Chi square analysis showed…

Approximately 30% of students who persist to the end of their courses at two-year colleges do not do so with a passing grade, yet research on the educational experiences of these unsuccessful community college persisters remains limited. The purpose of this explanatory mixed-methods study was threefold. First, this study attempted to identify…

The purpose of this research was to expand on previous research surrounding remedial education at the college level. This research was conducted in four phases and identified common traits for a population of remedial learners and then determined how these common elements, when implemented, positively impacted the academic success for learners in…

This study examines how an understanding of two NLP concepts, the meta-model of language and the implementation of reframing, could be used to help teaching assistants enhance class-based interactions with students with mild SEN. Participants (students) completed a pre-intervention and a post-intervention "Beliefs About my Learning…

The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to determine if, when implemented at one two-year post-secondary institution, such K-12 reading comprehension strategies as concept mapping, think-aloud protocols, and Question-Answer Relationships (QAR) elicit change in COMPASS reading test scores of adult readers. Data was collected over four academic…

Despite a substantial body of research on the effectiveness of distance education at the post-secondary level, little is known about the impact of online course delivery on the achievement gap. In California, the gap between white and Latino post-secondary student outcomes is significant and persistent, with Latino students overrepresented in…

This action research study, set in a community college in the southwestern United States, was designed to investigate the effects of implementing cooperative learning strategies in a developmental mathematics course. Introductory algebra was formerly taught in a lecture based format, and as such regularly had a low course completion rate. To…

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…