Upcoming Presentations

League for Innovation in the Community College

Beyond Engagement: Evidence-Based Strategies for Improving Learning Online

Date & Time TBD

Students and faculty both encounter challenges in the online environment. These challenges frequently manifest and are understood in terms of low student engagement. In this session, researchers and community college faculty will present a specific and actionable framework to bolster students’ abilities to remain motivated and manage their learning processes in online courses. The presenters refer to these mutually reinforcing mindsets and behaviors as self-directed learning (SDL) skills and they include motivational processes (e.g., self-efficacy), metacognitive processes (e.g., planning), and applied learning processes (e.g., help seeking). Presenters will describe a set of evidence-based instructional strategies to support SDL developed in collaboration with instructors at broad-access institutions. Speakers will share research findings on how the strategies have been implemented in postsecondary online STEM courses and their effect on student outcomes. A community college faculty member will share their experience implementing the strategies in an online biology course.

Presenters

Ellen Wasserman, Research Associate, CCRC

Allystair Jones, Department Chair, Science & Professor of Biology, Odessa College

Keena Walters, Education Research Associate, SRI Education

Paving the Way to Better Higher Education Outcomes: Findings From the Center for the Analysis of Postsecondary Readiness

April 06, 2019
Toronto, Canada

Since 2014, the Center for the Analysis of Postsecondary Readiness (CAPR) has studied one of the most vexing issues facing higher education: remediation. Roughly six in 10 new undergraduates are referred to preparatory courses in reading, writing, or mathematics, and they must complete them before enrolling in most college-level courses. The majority of these students never finish their remedial requirements, much less earn a college degree. Under the joint leadership of the Community College Research Center (CCRC) at Teachers College, Columbia University, and MDRC, CAPR researchers have conducted rigorous studies of two promising remedial reforms—multiple measures placement and mathematics pathways—and have fielded a national survey at approximately 1,000 broad-access institutions to document their approaches to remediation. CAPR has also engaged several scholars to research other remedial reforms. The research that was presented in this session reflected the culmination of work from a five-year grant awarded by the U.S. Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences. Presenters described the studies and discussed how findings from CAPR are relevant to practice and policy, including the Higher Education Act Reauthorization.

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Participants

Elizabeth Zachry Rutschow
Research Associate
MDRC
Senior Research Scholar Emeritus
Community College Research Center
Angela Boatman
Assistant Professor
Vanderbilt University

Associated Project(s)