Community College Student Success Courses: The Student Perspective

Duggan, Molly H.; Williams, Mitchell R.

doi:10.1080/10668926.2011.525185

Cited by 12 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…The curricular "tools" of the programs, in the form of college success skills and academic planning, which receive a great deal of attention in practice and in the literature, were only marginally related to engagement, and only in terms of one of the three kinds of engagement. These results are a counterpoint, or at least a complement, to the literature that emphasizes the critical role of study skills, time management, and related competencies in college curricula (Allan & Clarke, 2007;Duggan & Williams, 2010;Engstrom & Tinto, 2008;Robbins et al, 2004;Struthers, Perry, & Menec, 2000).…”

Section: Curricular Featuresmentioning

confidence: 64%

The Structure of Student Engagement in Community College Student Success Programs: A Quantitative Activity Systems Analysis

Hatch

2017

AERA Open

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Community colleges increasingly implement various student success programs, including 1st-year seminars, college skills courses, learning communities, and orientation, in an effort to boost degree completion. However, it is unclear how success programs’ curricular designs may contribute to these and associated student outcomes. Such inquiry is limited, in part, by the lack of methodological frameworks for program impact heterogeneity research. This study proposes a new conceptualization of nominally different student success programs as instances of a broader activity, which also provides a way to operationalize their curricular structures in comparable ways. Second, to briefly illustrate this approach, the study leverages matched program and student data to investigate how variations in student engagement—an emergent intermediate outcome for fostering successful college going—are related to variation in program design. Findings reveal that structural and underutilized curricular elements may be more impactful than skills-based curricula that are typically the organizing focus of these programs.

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Section: Curricular Featuresmentioning

confidence: 64%

The Structure of Student Engagement in Community College Student Success Programs: A Quantitative Activity Systems Analysis

Hatch

2017

AERA Open

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“…The broad reach of these two latent classes confirms the multiple and overlapping terms that researchers use to variously define success courses in the literature (e.g. Duggan and Williams 2010;O'Gara et al 2009), even as a distinction between skillsfocused and comprehensive programs shows through.…”

Section: ) Minimalist Programsmentioning

confidence: 81%

An Empirical Typology of the Latent Programmatic Structure of Community College Student Success Programs

Hatch

Bohlig

2015

Res High Educ

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The definition and description of student success programs in the literature (e.g., orientation, firstyear seminars, learning communities, etc.) suggest underlying programmatic similarities. Yet researchers to date typically depend on ambiguous labels to delimit studies, resulting in loosely related but separate research lines and few generalizable findings. To demonstrate whether or how certain programs are effective there is need for more coherent conceptualizations to identify and describe programs. This is particularly problematic for community colleges where success programs are uniquely tailored relative to other sectors. The study's purpose is to derive an empirical typology of community college student success programs based on their curricular and programmatic features. Data come from 1047 success programs at 336 U.S.-based respondents to the Community College Institutional Survey. Because programs might be characterized by their focus in different curricular areas and combinations of foci, we used factor mixture modeling, a hybrid of factor analysis and latent class analysis, which provides a model-based classification method that simultaneously accounts for dimensional and categorical data structures. Descriptive findings revealed extensive commonalities among nominal program types. Inferential analysis revealed five factors (types) of program elements, combined in unique ways among four latent program types: success skills programs, comprehensive programs, collaborative academic programs, and minimalist programs. We illustrate how the typology deconstructs nominal categories, may help unify different bodies of research, and affords a common framework and language for researchers and practitioners to identify and conceptualize programs based on what they do rather than by their names. 72

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“…Qualitative research on student success courses provides some insights into students' experiences. For example, Duggan and Williams (2010) interviewed 60 students who recently had taken a student success course at one of ten community colleges, seeking to determine the topics and teaching methods that students perceived to be most helpful. While most students reported that their student success course was useful, some said they did not need the course because they perceived themselves to be sufficiently prepared for college prior to the course or believed that the information provided was "common sense" (Duggan and Williams 2010, p. 125).…”

Section: Programs and Initiatives With Potential To Improve Adult Students' Outcomesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Strengthening Outcomes of Adult Students in Community Colleges

Bahr

Boeck

Cummins

2021

Higher Education: Handbook of Theory and Research

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Students who are over 24 yearsolder than the age deemed "traditional" for higher educationaccount for about one in every three students enrolled in community colleges. Unfortunately, their educational outcomes lag behind their younger peers. A greater understanding of what it means to be an adult student in higher education is a crucial step toward determining how postsecondary institutions, particularly community colleges, can improve adults' experiences and chances of achieving their goals. With the overriding objective of providing guidance to stakeholders about how to strengthen adult students' success and increase college completion, we draw from extant literature to develop a Multidimensional Conceptualization of Adult Students (MCAS). We propose a corresponding set of measures to identify adult students in a community college's student population and to differentiate the gradations of experience, responsibility, and subject sense of adulthood that constitute adult status. We review evidence on adult students' participation in higher education, how their approaches to college tend to differ from younger students, and community college programs and initiatives that aim to improve adult students' outcomes. Finally, we discuss the alignment of the programs and initiatives with adult students' learning needs and with the dimensions of the MCAS.

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Community College Student Success Courses: The Student Perspective

Cited by 12 publications

References 8 publications

The Structure of Student Engagement in Community College Student Success Programs: A Quantitative Activity Systems Analysis

The Structure of Student Engagement in Community College Student Success Programs: A Quantitative Activity Systems Analysis

An Empirical Typology of the Latent Programmatic Structure of Community College Student Success Programs

Strengthening Outcomes of Adult Students in Community Colleges

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