In 2022, the Center for the Study of Social Policy and Project SPARC conducted research to better understand the barriers experienced by parenting students participating in CalWORKs, California's cash assistance program for families with children. This brief highlights findings from the research about parenting students' experiences navigating…

Over the past five years, the RP Group's "Through the Gate" transfer study has developed a deeper understanding of how California Community College (CCC) students experience transfer pathways. Specifically, the study focused on increasing transfer for "high-leverage" students: those who had completed all or most of the…

In 2022, the Center for the Study of Social Policy and Project SPARC conducted research to better understand the barriers experienced by parenting students participating in CalWORKs, California's cash assistance program for families with children. This brief highlights findings from the research on parenting students' experiences meeting their…

Colleges and universities increasingly rely on their websites to recruit students and convey information about tuition and costs of attendance. Given evidence of growing complexity in institutional tuition policies and cost-setting practices, the study examined how institutions' websites present financial information to the public. Through content…

An important question regards how we use environmental boundaries to anchor spatial representations during navigation. Behavioral and neurophysiological models appear to provide conflicting predictions, and this question has been difficult to answer because of technical challenges with testing navigation in novel, large-scale, realistic spatial…

Latinos are the largest minority in the U.S., yet they hold the least number of conferred college degrees compared to their total population. Despite these low numbers, Latinos have grown exponentially in colleges and universities. Presently, the University of California has six out of its nine undergraduate campuses designated Hispanic Serving…

With more than 325,000 students, the California State University (CSU) system is 1 of the largest in the United States, making it a useful unit of analysis for studying disability and diversity. Using a critical discourse theoretical framework and borrowing strategies from Astroff (2001) and Pauwells (2012), we found disability information on CSU…

The website--it is where people go to find out anything and everything about a school, college, or university. In the relatively short life of the Internet, institutional websites have moved from the periphery to center stage and become strategically integral communications and marketing tools. As the flow of information accelerates and new…

A number of academic, public, regional, and state libraries use WorldCat Local (WCL) as a resource location tool that enables users to search, find, and gain access to a range of print and electronic resources. This article describes a study undertaken to assess a Research I university's implementation of WCL. The study sought to understand the…

Like many other states, California is facing a daunting budget deficit, reportedly about $19 billion. Delayed budgets have held up the disbursement of money, affecting school programs in districts as well as at the California School for the Blind (CSB). The current financial constraints have had an impact on CSB's programs. Its department of seven…

Informal education in museums is structured through movement in space. This article summarizes a range of research that examines the role of spatial layout in shaping the ways in which visitors explore, engage, and understand museums and museum exhibitions. It is demonstrated that behavior patterns are systematically linked to spatial…

Websites will become increasingly important to physical education departments as they seek to communicate the goals and content of their programs. A well developed website is an educational tool physical educators can use in their efforts to teach students about physical activity and health. The purpose of this study was to determine the…

This study examines student preferences and behavior when navigating online multimedia modules dedicated to teaching cultural aspects associated with an L2, and the contribution of the online multimedia format of the modules to raising interest in these cultural topics. It focuses on student options regarding reading texts on the modules' main…

Field instruction is a critical piece of undergraduate geoscience majors' education, and fieldwork remains a major part of the work of professional geologists. Despite the central importance of field education, there exists relatively little educational research exploring how students learn to solve problems in geological fieldwork. This study…