Colleges have increasingly turned to predictive analytics to target at-risk students for additional support. Most of the predictive analytic applications in higher education are proprietary, with private companies offering little transparency about their underlying models. We address this lack of transparency by systematically comparing two…

Reacting directly to the fact that even the best syllabus is worthless to the student who does not read it, this essay draws inspiration from research of the past decade, especially from the learning-focused syllabus concept that was introduced by three researchers at the University of Virginia, and uses a questionnaire to gauge our community…

A multitude of online courses are available that provide opportunities for students to meet their higher education needs, goals, and desires in a nontraditional school setting. But, from a content specific perspective, how are students performing in online courses compared to their face-to-face counterparts? This study seeks to examine the…

Food insecurity is associated with poorer educational outcomes across the education spectrum. At the K-12 level, receipt of food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as Food Stamps) or through universal school lunch is associated with positive, if small, effects on student outcomes. Little is…

This study's purpose is to explore the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on international students who were studying at U.S. community colleges at the onset of this public health crisis. While previous work has explored the impact of the pandemic on international students generally, we argue that community college international students deserve…

In corequisite models of instruction, marginally prepared students are placed directly into college-level coursework, taught with a paired support course. Initial research suggests that such models yield significant improvements in the number of students passing credit-level mathematics when compared to previous models of prerequisite remediation.…

The successes of corequisite remediation courses and supplemental instruction over traditional remediation courses such as the modular Math Essentials have been widely and recently documented (Logue, Watanabe-Rose, & Douglas, 2016). Corequisite reform is an important strategy to improve student completion of higher education goals. A robust…

Late registration is a common practice in community colleges, but the evidence-based argument for the presumed deleterious effects of late registration on student success is weaker than is commonly believed, and there has been no published research on how success rates may differ for late registrants in online and on-campus classes, and for…

For several years now, the Old Dominion University community college leadership research team has been examining academic affairs and student affairs outcomes on community college student success. College student professionals on two-year campuses most typically provide a wide variety of supports and interventions across campus, in settings that…

Despite evidence suggesting that standardized tests are an imperfect measure of academic readiness, many community colleges across the country rely on them alone to determine student course placement. However, when the COVID-19 pandemic forced campuses to transition to remote operations in spring 2020, proctoring in-person placement tests became…

Online learning has changed higher education, emerging as a primary source for delivering courses and programs to students. As online learning has grown, more non-traditional students have entered college, many for the first time. Consequently, many of these non-traditional are experiencing online learning, and the technologies that deliver them,…

In the Emporium Model (EM), students work toward mastery thresholds using commercial instructional software in a computer lab staffed with instructors. This qualitative case study uses classroom observations and interviews to describe instruction and student behavior in EM classrooms for developmental mathematics at one college in the Virginia…

Online learning has changed higher education, emerging as a primary source for delivering courses and programs to students. As online learning has grown, more non-traditional students have entered college, many for the first time. Consequently, many of these non-traditional are experiencing online learning, and the technologies that deliver them,…

Early alert systems have promised to be an integral component of a student success solution. The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine the relationship between the use of the early alert system and persistence for students taking developmental education courses and students taking college-level courses in the Virginia Community College…

This chapter describes the challenges and opportunities associated with creating sophisticated support networks designed to support youth experiencing homelessness. The authors offer an overview of programs and policies that is interwoven with the story of Susan, a composite of youth with whom they have worked, to illustrate the ways Virginia is…