Little research has been done on faculty attitudes on their advising experience. The current study examined the attitudes of instructional faculty towards their role, responsibility, and competence levels regarding faculty advising in a small, urban university in the southeast United States. The purpose of this research was to investigate and…

Over the last four decades, community colleges have played an increasingly important role in higher education. Today, community colleges enroll more than one in every three undergraduates nationally. Unfortunately, among students who enroll in community colleges with the intent to earn a credential or transfer to a four-year institution, only 51…

Community college leaders are using many strategies to improve their students' ability to complete their studies, particularly their academically underprepared students. In recent years, these strategies have included adaptations of an approach long used in four-year colleges known as "learning communities," in which groups of students…

Providing instructor manuals for part-time faculty is not a new practice. Post-secondary institutions often produce manuals filled with everything from the college calendar to the procedure for obtaining a parking pass. However, in the age of stretched budgets and waning support from their institutions, developmental education programs are looking…

This is the third and final article in this series. The first article reviewed the literature for research studies on successful developmental programs and students. The second article reported on the qualitative research methods and results documented from a purposive sample of twenty successful developmental mathematics students 3-5 years after…

This descriptive study entitled: College Students' Perceptions of the Impact of Developmental Courses on Their Academic Performance and Persistence investigated the perceptions of college students and their responses to developmental courses. The population included students enrolled in the first semester of summer school 2010, at a selected urban…

The number of leadership education and development programs has increased substantially over the past few decades. However, deliberate assessment strategies aimed at understanding actual student development have not kept pace. The primary reason for this limitation likely involves the challenges that are associated with this type of assessment.…

Personal response devices, "clickers," that allow students to answer questions and see on a projected screen the results of their voting, followed by discussion and reprocessing, is a form of educational technology that has been embraced by instructors of large classes, particularly in the natural sciences. This dissertation describes their use in…

"Teaching community: A pedagogy of hope" (hooks, 2003), offers insights that are easily transferable to the field of developmental education. bell hooks' (2003) rich descriptions of her experiences as an educator, both within and beyond the classroom, are valuable reading for educators seeking to expand their perspectives on their…

Prerequisites for the Developmental Biology course at Augustana College are introductory courses in zoology and cell biology. After introductory courses students appreciate the fact that proteins have three-dimensional structures; however, they often fail to recognize how protein interactions with other cellular components can lead to specific…

The mission of the Virginia Community College workforce development leaders is to expand their training and development services to new and emerging high growth occupational areas in support of Virginia's economic growth and changing workforce needs in each of their regions. This research was designed to identify: high demand occupational skill…

This article describes elaboration in "literary letters" (Atwell, 1984, 1987) written by developmental reading students. Nineteen community college students received instruction in "elaborative thought patterns," or types of elaboration, to improve the quality of their responses to popular fiction. This instruction was part of…

Using data from Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count, this issue of "Data Notes" is the second of a two-part series investigating the characteristics of stop-outs at Achieving the Dream colleges. In this issue, students who stop out during high- frequency terms are examined by age, developmental referral status, grade point average and…

Developmental education is an important part of the community college mission. Because there has been such a large increase in the number of female undergraduates, the difference in developmental needs and outcomes between male and female students has become increasingly important. Using data from Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count, the…

This brief presents the results of a study which found that a developmental mathematics program at a four-year institution is an effective mechanism for retaining students (Lesik, 2007). This study employed a regression-discontinuity model that researchers can use to establish a causal link between participation in a developmental program and…