Affordability is considered a key predictor of college enrollment and academic success, yet higher education costs continue to rise. Over the past three decades, textbooks and course materials alone have increased almost three times the rate of inflation (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2016). To identify the extent to which course material costs…

In recent years, "contextualization" has emerged as a buzzword in higher education, and, in community college developmental education contexts in particular. However, it is important to note that contextualization is more than an innovation that is specific to the current developmental education reform movement, as iterations of this…

Recent evidence indicates that approximately half of community college students are food insecure, indicating reductions in the quality or quantity of their diets due to resource constraints (Goldrick-Rab et al., 2019). In K-12 and higher education settings, food insecurity and hunger are associated with lower levels of academic achievement and…

Although emergency aid programs have existed on community college campuses for years, no extant research has articulated which emergency resources students apply for and how students prioritize these resources against others (e.g., food needs compared to housing needs). To better understand student emergency aid needs shortly after the World…

Assembly Bill 705 (AB705) is one of the most ambitious reforms in California higher education to date, as it directs all community colleges in the state to maximize the number of students completing transfer-level math and English courses in one year's time. This report describes outcomes in the Los Angeles Community College District after Fall…

The purpose of this study was to use Kuh's theory of student engagement to compare levels of active and collaborative learning, student and faculty interaction, and support for learners for African American males in community college using the Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE) data. The independent variables were the levels of…

Due to consistent growth in eLearning in the United States, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, a great amount of emphasis has been placed on what is required to ensure that students find success in online education. With an estimated $13 billion invested in online education as of 2019, institutions of higher education must work to ensure…

The author graduated with an associate degree in liberal arts from Northern Essex Community College (NECC) in Haverhill, Massachusetts. Although he was one of over a thousand students to graduate that day, his situation was a little different than those of his peers. The author is a full-time faculty member at NECC with a Ph.D. in organic…

This chapter examines student success outcomes utilizing sexual and gender identity student data.

The study explores the extent to which transformative learning occurs using quantitative and qualitative methods in a human geography course (N = 35) and explores student affect in relation to the learning environment. We used the eight-scale Transformative Learning Environments Survey (TLES) instrument for the quantitative analysis and an aligned…

Today, there is growing interest in digital game-based learning due to the increase in the variety of educational and commercial games available. The literature indicates that digital educational games are effective at keeping learners engaged. This study examines the use of a digital educational game called Kahoot and supports the hypothesis that…

In recent years, transfer and articulation has become a hot topic within the higher education research and policy literature. This is evidenced by the myriad of terms whose roots trace to the broader issue of transfer and articulation. Common course numbering across public 2- and 4-year sectors, guaranteed acceptance of the associate's degree by…

Community colleges aren't quite as high on the list of hackers and scammers as institutions like banks, hospitals and four-year research universities, yet the institutional and personal data stored on their servers and in the online cloud can be valuable, so they need to lock down their data like any other entity. This requires a combination of…

Reading and conducting research can initially feel daunting for community college students. For this nontraditional aged, first generation student-researcher, the interest in research increased with the availability of TEDx Talks. The overall intent of the study was to evaluate the empathetic reactivity of students (n = 78) while viewing a…

Nursing school can be challenging for undergraduate students, largely because they do not know what to expect in terms of the demands of the rigorous academic program. Students who enter the program with unrealistic expectations of the demands, such as underestimated time needed for studying for exams or preparing for clinical and class time, as…