More community college professors are replacing expensive commercial textbooks with no-cost open educational resources (OER) to help make college more affordable for their students. With students having no financial reason to delay or forgo textbook purchases, many instructors also expect OER adoption will lead to improvements in academic outcomes…

The present study examined demographic and academic predictors of astronomy performance among a cohort of N=1909 community college students enrolled in astronomy courses in a large suburban community college during a four-year time frame, 2015-2019. The theoretical framework was based upon a deconstructive approach for predicting community college…

Open Educational Resources (OER) are regularly adopted, yet questions persist about efficacy. Do OER improve student performance? Research produces ambiguous results, because these are derived from small sample sizes, inadequate efficacy measures, and neglect of interactional effects. We examine the effect of OER on student grades using over…

Guided by the notion of academic momentum, this study drew data from longitudinal transcript records at a large public 4-year research university and examined factors that specifically contribute to community college transfer students' academic momentum. It also explored how early academic momentum along with students' sociodemographic…

Early alert systems are an intervention at community colleges that aim to identify and informally intervene with students who are struggling in their courses. This study examined the relationship between early alert systems and student success in developmental and gateway math courses. This study also examined if the impact of early alert…

Background: Promise programs are place-based financial aid awards that seek to promote postsecondary attainment by covering all or nearly all college tuition costs. In 2015 Oregon became the second state in the country after Tennessee to implement a statewide promise program (Higher Education Coordinating Commission [HECC], 2020). Oregon Promise…

Objective: Community colleges have considerable potential to grow the number of individuals who complete STEM baccalaureate degrees and to broaden access to educational opportunities in STEM. However, efforts to tap this potential have been hampered by nagging questions about whether community colleges prepare students adequately for advanced STEM…

Among community college leaders and others interested in reforms to improve student success, there is growing interest in adopting machine learning (ML) techniques to predict credential completion. However, ML algorithms are often complex and are not readily accessible to practitioners for whom a simpler set of near-term measures may serve as…

This report from the Career and Technical Education (CTE) Research Network Lead team provides final results from an evaluability assessment of CTE programs that feasibly could be evaluated using a rigorous experimental design. Evaluability assessments (also called feasibility studies) are used in education and other fields, such as international…

Logistic regression (LoR) is a foundational supervised machine learning algorithm and yet, unlike linear regression, appears rarely taught early on, where analogy and proximity to linear regression would be an advantage. A random sample of 50 syllabi from undergraduate business statistics courses shows only two percent of the courses included LoR.…

Community college presidential tenure has consistently declined for decades, which leaves scholars to question what factors are associated with this phenomenon. While there are many potential reasons for presidential turnover, this study seeks to understand how presidential fit is associated with increased presidential departure. Guided by the…

There is a gap in the literature regarding the association between critical thinking (CT) skills and student success in chemistry. This study sought to fill this gap by evaluating the association between CT skills and student success in chemistry. The purpose of this study was (a) to determine whether there is a positive correlation between CT…

The purpose of this study was to explore relationships between financial aid awards and measures of student academic achievement. Financial aid and academic records for 11,956 students attending an urban California community college were examined and analyzed using simultaneous linear regression and two-way factorial ANOVAs. Findings revealed a…

This retrospective study evaluates early semester predictors of whether or not community college students will successfully complete blended or hybrid courses. These predictors are available to faculty by the fourth week of the semester. Success is defined as receiving a grade of C- or higher. Failure is defined as a grade below a C- or a…

Background/Context: Although numerous studies have emerged shedding light on community college student success, the enduring role of social capital is often overlooked. Furthermore, when conceptualizing social capital in the community college context and its diverse student population, age represents a unique form of diversity in these…