This brief is rooted in the purpose and findings of a qualitative study that explored the experiences and perspectives of African-American/Black community college students in asynchronous online learning environments. A growing number of African-American/Black students are enrolling in California community colleges and online courses. However,…

Teachers in the US have historically served affective roles of uplift and civic engagement (Fultz, 1995; Gere, 2005), but reforms in the last century privileged technical aspects of the profession (Buchanan, 2015). The COVID-19 crisis, which shifted learning online and isolated students, revealed the limitations of a technical focus in teacher…

An active-learning concurrent preparatory general chemistry course was adopted to replace a prerequisite course that lacked effectiveness in improving student outcomes. Our previous study showed that the concurrent course increased final exam performance and retention in a cohort of students. This paper studies the course modality impact of the…

Teacher professional learning is often disjointed and not aligned with the curricula teachers use in daily instruction. This lack of preparation has led to fragmented approaches to teaching young students to read, in part because initiatives lose momentum, teachers modify the instruction beyond recognition, and programs are soon eclipsed by newer…

Faculty learning communities (FLCs), established prepandemic to disseminate and discuss evidence-based teaching practices as part of an NSF-funded project, Investigating Student Success Using Evidence-Based Strategies-eXpanded (ISSUES-X), proved effective at facilitating learning during a pandemic. As our university made the decision to operate…

California districts were forced to shift to distance learning models in the spring of 2020 and the transition to distance learning for students in the early grades--transitional kindergarten through third grade (TK-3)--has proved difficult for students, parents, and teachers alike. As distance learning persists, administrators and teachers can…

This report offers a framework for districts to use in their preparation to provide quality instruction through distance and blended models. In the wake of COVID-19, "teaching as usual" will be neither possible nor sufficient to meet students' needs because California's schools have experienced disruptions to each aspect of the…

In many ways, specialized computer labs are the black holes of IT organizations. Budgets, equipment, employees--even space itself--are sucked in. Given a choice, many IT shops would engage warp drive and escape their gravitational pull forever. While Captain Kirk might have looked to Scotty for a fix to the problem, colleges and universities are…

In October 2010, the University of Southern California School of Social Work entered the online education environment with the launch of the first national web-based MSW program. After an initial enrollment of 80 students, in just 3 years this state-of-the-art MSW, offered in a technology-advanced synchronous and asynchronous format, has generated…

Distance education strategies for remotely deployed, highly mobile, or institutionalized populations are reviewed and critiqued. Specifically, asynchronous, offline responses for special military units, Native Americans on remote reservations, prison populations and other geographically, temporally or technologically isolated niche populations are…

Is tutoring online more than just email? Two yearlong studies explored tutoring online in two different modes. One, from Atlantic Community College in New Jersey, looked at asynchronous (not real time) tutoring online using a discussion board. The other, at Pima Community College in Arizona, used synchronous (real time) online software. The…