Publications by Shanna Smith Jaggars

Drawing on administrative records from transfer-intending community college starters across three states, this paper develops a set of early STEM momentum metrics that are useful indicators of subsequent STEM transfer and bachelor’s degree attainment.

This journal article examines how students at six community colleges identified and weighed possible transfer destination colleges, and how dedicated and personalized advisement shaped students’ transfer plans and contributed to their transfer outcomes.

Drawing on findings from a study of postsecondary college transcript and degree records, this brief describes metrics that may be useful in assessing efforts to improve STEM transfer outcomes.

This report builds off previous research on American Honors to look at the unintended consequences of college promise programs for the economic mobility of high-achieving, low-income students.

In this Innovative Higher Education article, the authors examine the development and dissolution of a partnership between a privately held firm and six community colleges, which had established honors programs with the goal of facilitating students' transfer to selective institutions.

In this short essay, Shanna Jaggars (coauthor of Redesigning America's Community Colleges) and Amanda Folk (head of teaching and learning at the Ohio State Libraries) discuss how librarians' expertise could be harnessed to support guided pathways reforms.

In 2012, Quad Learning partnered with two community colleges to pilot American Honors, a program designed to help academically talented community college students overcome the challenges of transferring to more selective four-year destinations. This paper traces the components of the program's socially conscious theory of change, its for-profit business model, and the tensions between the two. 

This chapter in Higher Education: Handbook of Theory and Research reviews the structure and effectiveness of traditional developmental education and provides a history of first-, second-, and third-wave reforms and research on those approaches.

Using detailed administrative data from Virginia, this journal article examines whether community college “vertical transfer” students who resemble “native four-year” students in their accumulated college-level credits and performance at their point of entry into the four-year sector perform equally well in terms of both academic and labor market outcomes.

Based on a mixed-methods study at six colleges, this brief examines the domestic population served by American Honors; its key programmatic features; and community college student, faculty, and staff perspectives on the program.

This chapter examines the use of technology and other structural changes to encourage comprehensive advising reforms.

This report investigates the national landscape of computer science students at community colleges in order to better understand student behaviors and institutional characteristics that support or hinder community college students’ efforts to attain a computer science bachelor’s degree.

This report for The Century Foundation's College Completion Series lays out the open questions on how to reform developmental education.

Using detailed administrative data from Virginia, this CAPSEE working paper examines how and why the community college pathway to a baccalaureate influences students’ degree attainment and short-term labor market performance.

This paper introduces an online course quality rubric addressing four quality areas, and it examines the relationship between each quality area and student end-of-semester performance.

This paper introduces a piecewise growth approach to analyzing labor market outcomes of students, and it discusses how insights gained from the approach can be used to strengthen econometric analyses of labor market returns.

The authors of this book argue that to substantially increase student completion, community colleges must engage in fundamental redesign and outline research-based strategies to help colleges achieve this goal.

This practitioner packet summarizes evidence supporting the guided pathways reform model, describes how one college implemented guided pathways, and offers tips for getting started on guided pathways reforms.

This study examines three developmental acceleration programs—two in English and one in math—and finds that accelerated students were more likely to complete the relevant college-level course within 3 years.

This study examines how well students adapt to the online environment in terms of their ability to persist and earn strong grades in online courses relative to their ability to do so in face-to-face courses.

This practitioner packet aims to help colleges identify areas where students struggle due to complexity in the academic decision-making process and devise low-cost solutions.

This working paper presents a case study of how one large, suburban community college planned and implemented a relatively low-cost redesign of its student intake and information provision processes.

This paper compares the academic outcomes of students at Chabot College who participated in an accelerated, one-semester developmental English course and those who enrolled in a two-semester sequence.

This article discusses community college students’ experiences with online and face-to-face learning and implications for community colleges.

This journal article examines the impact of acceleration on access, performance, credit accumulation, and degree attainment at CUNY.

Using an instrumental variable technique, the authors estimate the impact of online versus face-to-face course delivery on student course performance, as indicated by course persistence and final course grade.

Based on a case study of the City University of New York's six community colleges, this publication identifies the conflicting motivations that shape developmental education reform efforts.

In response to a journal article questioning CCRC’s claims about the effectiveness of developmental education, this essay discusses methodological concerns and other issues that may be a source of confusion.

This report discusses the development of FastStart, its program features, and student perspectives, and it presents findings from a quantitative analysis of the FastStart math program.

The Developmental Education Initiative provided funding to 15 colleges to implement or scale up developmental reform strategies. This report examines the implementation of these strategies.

This chapter reviews the literature on online learning in community colleges, focusing online course-taking patterns, performance in online versus face-to-face courses, and factors affecting online course performance.

This paper presents the findings from a follow-up quantitative analysis of the Community College of Baltimore County’s Accelerated Learning Program (ALP).

This paper describes a range of approaches to improving poor course placement accuracy and inconsistent standards associated with traditional assessment and placement practices at community colleges.

This study used a statewide administrative dataset to estimate the effects of taking one's first college-level math or English course online rather than face to face, in terms of both course retention and course performance.

This review of the postsecondary literature on online learning suggests that online coursework hinders progression for low-income and underprepared students, explores why students might struggle in these courses, and offers suggestions on how public policy and institutional practice could be changed to improve online learning.

This working paper investigates enrollment patterns and academic outcomes over five years in online, hybrid, and face-to-face courses among students who enrolled in Washington State community and technical colleges in the fall of 2004.

This paper summarizes findings from eight working papers (the Assessment of Evidence Series) that synthesized research on strategies for improving outcomes for community college students, and makes four broad recommendations based on these findings.

This study examines online course taking patterns among students in the Virginia Community College System, as well as retention and performance in online versus face-to-face courses, and subsequent educational outcomes.

This paper presents findings from a quantitative analysis of the Community College of Baltimore County's Accelerated Learning Program (ALP) for upper level developmental writing students.

This paper demonstrates that a close analysis of the studies of online learning included in a Department of Education meta-analysis reveals no trend in favor of the online course mode.

CCRC examined student characteristics, course-taking patterns, and other factors associated with higher probabilities that students who require remediation will take and pass gatekeeper courses.