This study examined the impact of a newly created Academic Advising Professional Development (AAPD) online program focused on the three major components of the "Concept of Academic Advising" for new and experienced advisors. The four-unit training, created in Blackboard, was designed to educate advisors on the meaning and application of…

The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to investigate how community college supervisors in Arizona describe their role in promoting feedback-seeking, reflection, and active experimentation. The theoretical frameworks supporting this study were Bandura's social cognitive theory, Marsick and Watkins informal and incidental learning…

Behavioral and Social Science (BSS) classes provide students with understandings of human behaviors, motivations, and actions that are crucial to confronting both social and personal problems. Moreover, most community college degrees require that students take at least one BSS class - anthropology, economics, political science, psychology, and/or…

Nearly half of all U.S. students who declare science majors in college do not graduate with science degrees within six years. Improvements in science outcomes are linked with active-learning pedagogies such as Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs). However, despite the need for education reform particularly in Alabama,…

The purpose of this study was to use Kuh's theory of student engagement to compare levels of active and collaborative learning, student and faculty interaction, and support for learners for African American males in community college using the Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE) data. The independent variables were the levels of…

Over the course of several decades, a large body of research written with a focus on community colleges has accumulated based on the high need for remediation in mathematics, and has been associated with high attrition rates at that level. Reform efforts have been largely unsuccessful. This qualitative study was conducted so that the phenomenon of…

Community college leaders face challenges due to a lack of persistence data concerning 2-year colleges, especially in rural settings, prompting these leaders to turn to national data sets to drive local institutional changes. The purpose of this study was to identify variables associated with student place-frame and academic integration which are…

Purpose. The first purpose of this study was to identify and describe what actions faculty experts recommend for California Community Colleges to ensure maximum effectiveness of instructional strategies and related academic support programs in developmental mathematics by the year 2020. The second purpose of the study was to identify and describe…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine the degree to which differences were present between First-Time in College (FTIC) community college students and non-FTIC community college students with respect to specific student behaviors. Of particular interest was whether reported student effort and student engagement differed between these…

Service learning has grown in popularity within higher education as a teaching pedagogy shown to foster student engagement as well as strengthen the relationships between the community and community college. Research has demonstrated that service learning places a focus on students gaining the hands-on experience tied closely to course objectives…

This Dissertation in Practice (DiP) uses an action research (AR) methodology to answer a research question pertaining to the impacts of implementing a multimodal-based assessment project in the introductory, General Biology I (BI 114) classroom at East-State Junior College. A mixed-methods approach will be utilized to ascertain the impacts on…

Active learning, an engaging, student-centered, evidence-based pedagogy, has been shown to improve student satisfaction, engagement, and achievement in college classrooms. There have been numerous calls to reform teaching practices, especially in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM); however, the utilization of active learning is…

Active learning methodologies (ALM) are associated with student success, but little research on this topic has been pursued at the community college level. At a local community college, students in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) courses exhibited lower than average grades. The purpose of this study was to examine whether the use…

Introductory biology and chemistry courses have some of the highest attrition rates at Delaware Technical Community College. High attrition rates in undergraduate Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) courses are also present on a national scale (Chen, 2013). Research in student success points to a lack of student-centered…

The purpose of this research is to investigate whether there are differences in student engagement of Allied Health students that attend five participating Maryland community colleges. Student engagement is measured by five benchmark scores on the Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE). The research question was, Are there…