In response to low completion rates in the California Community College system, the 2012 Seymour Campbell Student Success Act requires districts or colleges to provide all degree- or transfer-seeking students with an opportunity to develop individual Student Educational Plans (SEPs). SEPs are guiding documents prepared in consultation with…

The implementation of the Common Core State Standards has brought about a renewed inspiration for exploring the role of communication in K-12 schools as they include a speaking and listening strand. Communication education in K-12 schools had been sparsely researched; however, a handful of scholars have made calls to increase the research and…

The effects of offering and seizing optional learning opportunities rarely have been investigated. Thus, university instructors have no basis on which to decide whether offering optional learning opportunities to their students would be worth the effort and which students would seize and benefit from them. To target these questions, we designed a…

Institutions of higher education are in the business of educating students, and many institutions require students to demonstrate that they have acquired a certain level of digital literacy knowledge and skills by passing an introductory computer class. Recently, discussions concerning whether the current "digital natives" already…

My dissertation evaluates two efforts to improve undergraduate economics education---the College Fed Challenge (CFC) competition and requiring intermediate algebra as a prerequisite for taking introductory economics courses. Using survey data of undergraduate students who participated in the CFC competition and a control group of students who did…

Lower-level processes have long been overlooked in EFL listening pedagogy. To address this pervasive problem, in this study, a program was designed that integrated WeChat, the most popular mobile instant messaging app in China, into dictation practice. Students in two classes studying a compulsory university EFL course were selected as…

As multicultural education continues to evolve, better assessments are necessary to provide a holistic measure of the effectiveness of multicultural education in the academy. Unfortunately, as multicultural scholars champion the cause for social justice, equity, and access for school children they remain vulnerable to negative promotion and tenure…

We investigate the degree to which undergraduate computing students in a United States university consider accessibility several years after instruction. Prior work has found that cultural and ethical norms become ingrained early in STEM professionals' careers; so, we focus on students approaching graduation and after an internship experience, who…

This report examines the implementation of the Securing Opportunities for Academic Recovery (SOAR) program that operated during the summer of 2020 at 31 schools. The program was designed to mitigate academic deficits that resulted from the shutdown of schools due to the Coronavirus pandemic. SOAR was implemented in two phases: Recovery and Regain.…

High school graduation rates have increased dramatically in the past two decades. Some skepticism has arisen, however, because of the confluence of the graduation rise and the starts of high-stakes accountability for graduation rates with "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB). In this study we provide some of the first evidence about the role of…

This article investigates how mastery of prerequisite course material impacts student learning in follow-on courses. To measure the importance of prerequisite skills, we compare the exam scores of students with a GPA of 3.0 or better in their multidisciplinary prerequisite classes to the exam scores of students with a GPA of less than 3.0 in their…

Information systems (IS) curriculum review is a continuous process. Universities seek to offer content that they believe will be most beneficial to students as they begin their career. However, that content may or may not satisfy employer needs. This paper, which is part of a larger study, seeks to determine if required course content matches the…

Consumer electronics are creating huge job markets for graduates with the programming back-ground, and more and more computer science departments are launching embedded software subjects to meet this demand. However, most students majoring computer science do not have the background in electronics, or even circuits. Due to this reason, how to…

This article uses fixed effects models to estimate differences in contemporaneous and downstream academic outcomes for students who take courses virtually and face-to-face--both for initial attempts and for credit recovery. We find that while contemporaneous outcomes are positive for virtual students in both settings, downstream outcomes vary by…

This article describes a mixed-methods study that examines the effects of literature circles (peer-led small group discussion of an assigned reading) on the reading achievement of college students taking developmental reading courses. The researcher-developed intervention was comprised of three connected activities (collaborative oral re-tell,…