Objective: Using data from "HEIghten"® Critical Thinking, a student learning outcomes assessment, the purpose of this study was to evaluate what variables are associated with higher critical thinking performance for students enrolled in various community college programs and to evaluate performance differences across demographic and…

The California Community College system, as an open access institution, is tasked with helping students who possess math skills far below college-level complete math course requirements for obtaining an associate degree or transfer to a university. Colleges have created various developmental math programs to achieve this mission; this paper…

As discipline-based astronomy education researchers become more interested in experimentally testing innovative teaching strategies to enhance learning in undergraduate introductory astronomy survey courses ("ASTRO 101"), scholars are placing increased attention toward better understanding factors impacting student gain scores on the…

Sexual orientation has been socially prominent in the national media lately, but little is known about how college creates opportunity for thinking about sexual orientation among individual students. Using data from the Diverse Learning Environments survey, administered by the Higher Education Research Institute, we compared samples of…

Numerous studies have reported on the innovative and effective delivery of online course content by community colleges, but not much has been done on how learning management systems (LMS) can deliver real-time (immediate data delivery) antecedents that inform students of performance requirements. This pilot study used Blackboard's™ interactive…

At community colleges, student preparedness for college-level work is a significant initial barrier. Over 70% of community college students are reported to be inadequately prepared for college mathematics. Because students need to pass college-level math in order to enroll in subsequent courses required for their majors or to complete general…

Community colleges are becoming the primary access point for a growing number of underrepresented and underserved students in the higher education system. First-generation college students make up a large proportion of this population, comprising about 45% of community college attendees (Nomi, 2005). Research has explored the transfer success of…

The purpose of this descriptive causal-comparative study was to examine persistence to graduation of student cohorts with 60+ credit hours earned who are native to the university and transfer students coming into Tennessee Technological University with 60+ credit hours previously earned at a community college. Data were obtained for each student…

For many underrepresented minority students, the path to the baccalaureate degree begins with initial enrollment at a community college. Unfortunately, only a small percentage of students interested in transferring actually do transfer to a 4-year institution. Of these transfers, few graduate with a baccalaureate degree within 6 years of initial…

A sample of 406 subjects completed a questionnaire testing the influence of personal spirituality, education and several other factors on sexual tension in cross-sex friendships (CSF Tension). The subjects included 143 students from a Christian university (CU), 137 from a secular junior college (JC), and 127 non-students (NS). The primary…

Traditionally, modeling student retention has been done by deriving student success predictors and measuring the likelihood of success based on several background factors such as age, race, gender, and other pre-college variables, also known as the input-output model. Increasingly, however, researchers have used mediating factors of the student…

This quantitative study examined first-year university and community college students who were former Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) high school students. Participants in this study were students from groups that are underrepresented in higher education. In the first sample of 329 graduates, grade point average and college credit…

The purpose of this study was to examine factors that influence student success in two-year colleges, community colleges, or junior colleges. In determining the purpose of the study, a research framework is established to review the relationships between student success and biological children, marriage/co-habitation, early family configuration,…

Developmental education has been cited as one of the most difficult issues facing community colleges. Despite the controversy and changes to educational policy regarding developmental education, there is a notable dearth of rigorous research measuring the causal effect of remediation on community college student outcomes. The present study uses…

This study focused on assessing the relationship of class scheduling with student outcomes in Intermediate Algebra, the prerequisite course for College Algebra. Numerous studies of information processing theory and the spacing effect on learning have been conducted; they have produced mixed findings. Relatively few studies have been conducted to…