Group items tagged

By Gail O. Mellow and Cynthia Heelan (2008). This page is the announcement of the book from LaGuardia Community College and the text/video of Dr. Mellow's lecture for the Robert H. Atwell lecture.

By Diana D. Woolis and Gail O. Mellow. This page is the abstract for the book chapter on the Emerald website.

By Elyse Ashburn in The Chronicle of Higher Education, February 9, 2011. A recently released national survey, commission by the Pearson Foundation, has revealed that one in five community college students had difficulty getting into at least one course they needed in fall 2010, and almost a third could not get into a class that they wanted.

J.E.C. shared this story. It offers some statistics. (Survey available on Pearson; will bookmark as soon as found.)

By Kristen Amundson, Op/Ed, The Washington Post, May 27 2011. Amundson argues that the state of Virginia is doing itself a disservice by allowing high school students to graduate with a "standard diploma." The diploma requires only three years of math, leaving many students unprepared for college math and thus required to enroll in developmental math.

According to their "About AACC" page, "The association represents almost 1,200 two-year, associate degree-granting institutions and more than 11 million students." This is a great "go-to" site, with a variety of statistics, demographics and "Fast Facts" as well as information on the White House Summit and related federal initiatives that pertain to community colleges.

By Kevin Carey in the Commentary section of The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 15 2011. Carey cites a recent negotiation between the US Departments of Education and Labor in which community colleges can compete for federal funds "to serve students online" but, in exchange, will also provide those online tools, free, via Creative Commons license.

By Ryan Brown in the Community Colleges section of The Chronicle of Higher Education, July 18 2011. The article reports on a recent CCRC study of 51,000 community college students in Washington State between 2004 and 2009. In 2010, CCRC released a similar study looking at online learning in the Virginia community college system. Reasons for this gap are surmised to be "technical difficulties, a lack of structure, and isolation."

By Thomas Bailey, Dong Wook Jeong and Sung-Woo Cho, Community College Research Center, Teachers College, Columbia University in Economics of Education Review, Volume 29, Issue 2, April 2010, Pages 255-270. "The purpose of this paper is to analyze the patterns and determinants of student progression through sequences of developmental education starting from initial referral. Our results indicate that fewer than one half of the students who are referred to remediation actually complete the entire sequence to which they are referred..."

For GSCC faculty, there is a copy of this article available in Coffee Klatch

Presented by Innovation in Teaching and Leaning for Technological Innovation at Nashville State Community College. The premise of this project is that a course is linked with a local business and the students work directly with business partners to solve "real-world problems." The site offers background on problem-based and case-based learning, as well as tools to help an instructor connect with a business and frame his/her course.

By George Lorenzo, 2011. A renewed interest in community colleges is resulting in looking at driving factors for the future success. This report looks at the potential solutions proposed in papers that came out of The White House Summit on Community Colleges held on October 5, 2010. These include industry partnerships, providing a more well-rounded education with career training, better support services at community colleges,etc. Lorenzo mentions The Learn and Earn initiative, technology with online and hybrid courses, open education resources and other ways to engage students. He looks at college readiness and what Complete College America, a new nonprofit organization, advises as ways to address this shortcoming.

Based in Washington State, the stated goals of this project are: (1) "aligning standards and expectations for mathematics....(2) increasing student success in completing math requirements in high school and college....(3) building capacity of teachers and instructors to align curriculum and instruction to standards....(4) communicating math expectations to students...." The project bridges the high school/college divide.

The mission of this organization is to improve community college effectiveness and student success by engaging in relevant and applicable research related to community college practice and policy.

By the SOURCE on Community College Issues, Trends & Strategies, May 2011. For this report, the SOURCE's editor-in-chief interviewed eleven community college leaders from across the country. Questions relate to: college readiness, remedial education, workforce development, educational technologies, student services, data analysis, funding/grants

This site offers reports, articles and links to other resources. We are reviewing this site and bookmarking resources individually.

By Jennifer Gonzalez, Students column, The Chronicle of Higher Education, April 10, 2011. Studies conducted by MDRC have found that, "while students [in learning communities] do make academic gains, such as progressing more quickly through developmental courses, the gains don't persist beyond the semester students are involved in the learning community." Authors acknowledge that these are early findings and that later findings may prove different results.

By Rosemary Capps, August 2010. In this dissertation, Capps looks deeply at the persistence of 9 adult learners in a community college, while also looking at the literature of persistence, demographic surveys, etc.

Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count. Cutting Edge Series No. 1 (2011) Guide is based on findings from Public Agenda's research into practices for engaging full-time and adjunct faculty in institutional change efforts toward increasing student success as community colleges.

Part of The Aspen Institute, "The purpose of the Aspen Prize is to recognize community colleges with outstanding academic and workforce outcomes in both absolute performance and improvements over time. By focusing on student success and lifting up models that work, the prize will honor excellence, stimulate innovation, and create benchmarks for measuring progress." (Program Summary)

By Thomas J. Snyder in The Hechinger Report, May 3 2011. Snyder, president of the nation's largest state-wide community college (Ivy Tech Community College in Indiana), argues that governors who cut funding to community colleges are being short-sighted, and argues for the importance of community colleges in the economic recovery.

"As many as four out of five community college students in the United States want to transfer to a four-year institution so they can obtain a bachelor's degree, according to a report released Thursday by the College Board."