Adult students constitute a large and increasing proportion of community college enrollment across the United States. For personal, economic, and sociological reasons, the success of these students is vital to the students themselves, the institutions they attend, and society as a whole. The purpose of this dissertation was to examine results from…

In the United States, there is a significant need for higher education institutions to provide adult degree completion programs (ADCP) to help students complete their degrees. According to the National Student Clearing House Research Center, as of July 2021, there are 41 million students with some college, no credentials (SCNC), in the United…

Blended, or hybrid, courses have often been touted as the ideal way to facilitate learning as they allow learners to interact in both face-to-face and online settings, thereby experiencing the "best of both worlds." In practice, that ideal learning setting is more difficult to achieve. While blended courses have the potential to…

This study illuminates students' purposive cultivation of guanxi, or social networks based on continuous exchange of resources, in the context of China's Adult Higher Education (HE) system. Interviews with 30 students reveal the motivations underpinning their creation of informal ties amongst peers, which they consider to procure beneficial…

Students face various barriers in learning English via distance education. The purpose of this explanatory mixed methods study was to collect quantitative and qualitative data regarding students' emotional intelligence (EI) and the situational barriers (SB) they faced in learning English via distance education. In phase one, 238 students…

The purpose of this article is two-fold. Firstly, we consider whether the setting up of mixed-gender focus group sessions has the potential as a research process to contribute to transforming people's understandings of their gendered relationships. Secondly, we relate our discussion to the question of the mutability of stereotypical thinking in…

Given the increasing popularity of online learning, the study of the user experience in online courses is relevant for the design of meaningful online learning. While there exist many checklists for online course evaluation, they focus on different items and lack consensus of common usability factors. Traditional usability studies focus on…

Recent years have seen a major decline in community college enrollments across the country. Although the market to attract secondary school students contains many pathways, the overall marketplace is very competitive as most schools are competing for the same body of students. The adult market is the largest and most neglected group of potential…

This is the protocol for a Campbell systematic review. The objectives are as follows: The purpose of this review is to synthesize the evidence about the efficacy of problem solving before instruction (PS-I) to promote learning and motivation in students. Specifically, this review is designed to answer the following questions: To what degree does…

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on adult education programs throughout the world, abruptly transforming in-person instruction to distance teaching/learning. Can the lessons learned from adult students, especially related to the "digital divide," be leveraged to enhance adult education and create more inclusive policies…

Refugee Background Mature Students, with many having come from the global South to seek asylum, form a minority group in higher education. This qualitative study uses a Critical Race Theory framework to examine the lived experience of four Refugee Background Mature Students from Angola and Nigeria with a focus on microaggresions, the everyday…

This study adapted and validated Barnard's Online Self-Regulated Learning Questionnaire (OSLQ) to assess adult learners' (n = 1302) online self-regulation, and examined its relation with attitude towards online learning and perceived online learning satisfaction. It was found that age and employment status were important demographic factors…

In asynchronous online video-based learning, learners experience various affective states, which may make them disengaged and negatively influence learning outcomes. This study aimed to examine the effect of the utility value (UV) intervention to help learners emotionally and behaviorally engage in online learning. The UV intervention includes…

The author examines how Latinx migrant and seasonal farmworkers (MSFW) engaged in survivance, active presence and resistance, in transition from K-12 schools to a High School Equivalency Program (HEP). Ethnographic methods were used to understand the educational experiences of Latinx students from MSFW backgrounds while pursuing a General…

Nontraditional students pursuing an advanced degree face unique challenges as compared to full-time traditional students. Current and former masters and PhD students (N = 266) were surveyed to examine differences in their educational experiences and emotional outcomes, and determinants of their positive and negative graduate education experiences.…