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Eric.ed.gov – Strategies for Promoting Gatekeeper Course Success among Students Needing Remediation: Research Report for the Virginia Community College System

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: The Virginia Community College System (VCCS) is engaged in a strategic planning process to improve performance beyond the goals in “Dateline 2009,” the system’s current vision and plan. A key objective is to encourage colleges to improve retention and academic success for students, particularly the substantial numbers who arrive unprepared for college-level work. Specifically, the VCCS seeks to improve the rates at which underprepared students complete developmental coursework and advance to take and pass college courses, particularly the initial college-level, or “gatekeeper,” math and English offerings. The VCCS asked the Community College Research Center (CCRC) at Teachers College, Columbia University, to conduct analyses to inform its efforts to improve student outcomes. In response, CCRC designed a study to address the following question: What student characteristics, course-taking patterns,… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Constructivists Online: Reimagining Progressive Practice. Occasional Paper Series 34

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: In this issue of the Occasional Paper Series, the authors reimagine progressive pedagogy within the framework of digital pedagogy and online practice. The issue begins with “Notes from the Special Issue Editors,” Helen Freidus, Mollie Welsh Kruger & Steven Goss. In the first set of essays, “Inside the Online Classroom,” the authors present the experiences of educators who have entered the square room but have refused to be limited by its constraints. These are teacher educators who have designed their courses for the online venue. Some enthusiastically chose to teach online; others were mandated to do so. Regardless of how their journey began, each author describes the work she or he is doing to bring constructivist practice online. To the surprise of each of these educators, they… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – The Role of Advanced High School Coursework in Increasing STEM Career Interest

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Several avenues are open to students who wish to study advanced science or mathematics in high school, which include Advanced Placement courses and teacher-designed courses unaffiliated with organized programs. We employ a retrospective cohort study of 4,691 nationally representative college students at 34 randomly selected, colleges and universities to examine the relationship between taking advanced high school courses and students’ interest in pursuing a STEM career, while controlling for prior interests and experiences. We are able to distinguish between those students choosing to take an additional year in a science or math subject from those taking Advanced Placement (AP), which is most commonly taken as a second year course, but is increasingly taken as a first year course. We find that the number of years of a… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Instruction Quality or Working Condition? The Effects of Part-Time Faculty on Student Academic Outcomes in Community College Introductory Courses

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: More than half of community college courses are taught by part-time faculty. Drawing on data from six community colleges, this study estimates the effects of part-time faculty versus full-time faculty on students’ current and subsequent course outcomes in developmental and gateway courses, using course fixed effects and propensity score matching to minimize bias arising from student self-sorting across and within courses. We find that part-time faculty have negative effects on student subsequent enrollments. These negative effects are driven by results in math courses. We also find that course schedules could explain substantial proportions of the estimated negative effects, while faculty individual characteristics could not. Survey results on faculty professional experiences suggest that part-time faculty had less institutional knowledge regarding both academic and nonacademic services. We infer that… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Expectations Meet Reality: The Underprepared Student and Community Colleges. 2016 National Report

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Improving college completion is a shared objective of higher education. It is the focus of colleges, foundations, state governments, and the White House. Students have gotten the message–their aspirations are on the rise. But the nation’s collective ambition far exceeds today’s outcomes. Many students are not attaining their goals. College readiness is at the heart of this disconnect between aspirations and results. If student outcomes are to equal student aspirations, colleges must be more effective in helping underprepared students move into–and successfully complete–college-level work. This 2016 National Report presents innovative strategies that are showing promise– multiple measures for assessing readiness, corequisite courses, redesigned math, accelerated developmental courses, computer-assisted developmental math, developmental education paired with workplace skills, high school partnerships, and improved preparation for placement tests. Examples of… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Integrating Reading and Writing Instruction in an Accelerated Curriculum: An Interview with Katie Hern

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Katie Hern is an English Instructor at Chabot College and Co-Founder of the California Acceleration Project (CAP), a professional development network that supports the state’s 113 community colleges to transform remediation and increase student completion and equity. Hern speaks nationally on remediation reform and integrated reading and writing. Her publications focus on the need to rethink placement, design principles for teaching accelerated English and math, pedagogy for integrated reading and writing, and the equity imperative of transforming remediation. In this interview with Norman Stahl, Hern discusses the changes within the field of developmental education across the past decade, and her hopes for the field going forward. Link til kilde

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Eric.ed.gov – Happy Together? The Peer Effects of Dual Enrollment Students on Community College Student Outcomes. CCRC Working Paper No. 116

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Nationally, 15% of first-time community college students were high school students taking college coursework through dual enrollment (DE) in the fall of 2010, and the percentage has risen since then. The growing numbers of DE students at community colleges raises concerns about how high school peers might influence traditionally aged college enrollees. Using administrative data from a large state community college system, we examine whether being exposed to a higher percentage of DE peers influences non-DE enrollees’ performance in college courses. Focusing on entry-level (or gateway) math and English courses and employing a two-way fixed effects model, we find that non-DE college enrollees exposed to a higher proportion of DE peers had lower pass rates and grades in gateway courses, and higher course repetition and lower subject… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Early Academic Outcomes for Students of Part-Time Faculty at Community Colleges: How and Why Does Instructors’ Employment Status Influence Student Success? CCRC Working Paper No. 112

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: More than half of community college courses are taught by part-time faculty, and the reliance on part-time faculty to teach developmental education courses and gateway math and English courses is even more prevalent. Drawing on data from six community colleges, this study estimates the effects of part-time faculty versus full-time faculty on students’ current and subsequent course outcomes in developmental and gateway courses, using course fixed effects and propensity score matching to minimize bias arising from student self-sorting across and within courses. While students with part-time instructors have better outcomes in their current course and similar pass rates in the next course in the sequence, they are 3 to 5 percentage points less likely to enroll in that subsequent course. The negative effects on subsequent enrollment are… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Laying the Foundations: Early Findings from the New Mathways Project

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: National studies reveal that 50 percent to 70 percent of community college students are required to take developmental, or remedial, math courses upon enrollment, and only 20 percent of developmental math students ever successfully complete a college-level math course. Taking up the challenge is the “New Mathways Project” (NMP), developed by the Charles A. Dana Center at the University of Texas at Austin in partnership with the Texas Association of Community Colleges. This new initiative aims to change the standard pathways to and through colleges’ traditional math sequences. This report analyzes the development of the “New Mathways Project” (NMP) from spring 2012 through its first year of rollout at nine colleges in Texas in 2013-2014, as well as student outcomes at the colleges before and during the… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Acceleration and Compression in Developmental Mathematics: Faculty Viewpoints

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Community colleges are facing increased pressure to accelerate students through their developmental mathematics sequence. However, many individuals feel that some state legislatures and college leaders are frequently bypassing developmental math faculty expertise when implementing acceleration and compression initiatives. This qualitative study focuses on faculty viewpoints with regard to acceleration and compression in developmental math. Guiding this study was the research question: Based on faculty experience, what is the best fit for the practices of acceleration and compression in developmental mathematics? Data has been gathered using a structured interview format for six developmental math instructors, two at each of three community colleges. Findings from this study suggested that the practices of acceleration and compression are a proper fit for students who are comfortable with computer software. Incoming skill… Continue Reading