As community colleges and systems move away from developmental education and encourage students to enroll in introductory, college-level coursework to complete their math and English requirements, it is critical to provide students with additional academic supports to help them succeed. One such model is the corequisite course, a model that offers…

Drawing on qualitative data collected in a sample of colleges as part of a larger study on the implementation and impact of AB 705 in California, this paper explores the rollout of corequisite reforms, focusing on the use of embedded tutors in introductory math and English courses as a strategy to meet to the needs of students. This paper…

This study had a dual focus. First, the study sought to understand the impact of policy on praxis. This was achieved through a Critical Policy Analysis of Assembly Bill 705 (AB705), a California law that attempts to reduce the number of non-credit courses required to earn required courses in college composition and mathematics. Second, the study…

The Town Hall Meeting (THM) program at California State University, Fullerton has been annually incorporated into several Introduction to American Politics course sections since 2011, to improve academic performance and promote civic engagement among enrolled students. This article provides a detailed analysis of results from a 2017…

Office hours are a part of nearly all science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses, with many academic and affective benefits for students who attend. However, despite their ubiquity, there has only been limited past work examining the sources of knowledge students draw from to shape their perceptions of office hours, as well…

We add to a growing literature suggesting that demographic grade gaps should be attributed to biases embedded in the courses themselves. Changes in the structure of two different introductory physics classes were made while leaving the topics covered and the level of coverage unchanged. First, a class where conceptual issues were studied before…

Public administration has a long tradition of close connections to the field of political science. As the field of public administration evolved from a basic politics administration dichotomy, it became evident that the distinction between politics and administration was nebulous at best. As such, public affairs students need exposure to, and…

Although evidence exists that online education can result in comparable outcomes to the equivalent face-to-face (F2F) version of a course, there is still a dearth of literature. The objective of this pilot was to investigate differences in academic performance between students participating in the F2F versus online versions of Nutrition 10, an…

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…

Analysis of weekly peer-reviewed writing exercises in undergraduate introductory biology courses revealed that student improvement in ability to judge essays correlated with improvement in their own writing (n = 121 students). This correlation occurred across the spectrum of academic ability. The essays were scored by peers, self, and the…

Evolution is controversial among students and religiosity, religious affiliation, understanding of evolution, and demographics are predictors of evolution acceptance. However, quantitative research has not explored the unique impact of student perceived conflict between their religion and evolution as a major factor influencing evolution…

This dissertation is split into two objectives: (1) to better understand the effect of relative humidity (RH) on charge transfer between metal electrodes and water droplets and (2) to assess the impact of The Design of Coffee, a general education, introductory chemical engineering course, on non-STEM students' ability to understand fundamental…

Students learn many concepts in the introductory statistics course, but even our most successful students end up with rigid, ritualized knowledge that does not transfer easily to new situations. In this article we describe our attempt to apply theories and findings from learning science to the design of a statistics course that aims to help…

We evaluate the effectiveness of companion classes designed to support at-risk first-year students in introductory biology and chemistry within the University of California system. Companion classes (co-classes) are optional classes associated with large, gateway biology and chemistry courses (parent classes) and provide three hours of instruction…

Quantitative reasoning (QR) is a key skill for undergraduate biology education. Despite this, many students struggle with QR. Here, we use the theoretical framework of student noticing to investigate why some students struggle with QR in introductory biology labs. Under this framework, what students notice when given new information and data…