tag: Community colleges
Blog Post
May 18, 2020
When Knowledge Breaks
As research, teaching, and learning in higher education drastically changed over the course of a few weeks earlier this term, effectively providing campus communities with relevant—yet continually changing—information has been critical. However, as we have documented in a recent multi-institution service planning initiative, students already were facing substantial challenges with navigating the college landscape prior to the pandemic. A few years ago, LaGuardia Community College developed an online platform to provide students with answers related to college services and…
Playbook
May 18, 2020
Planning, Partnering, and Piloting
A Community College Library Service Innovation Playbook
Service Concept Testing As part of a multi-year student service innovation project, co-led by Northern Virginia Community College and Ithaka S+R, we developed and implemented a new mixed-methods assessment approach: service concept testing.[1] With participation from six additional community college partners and support from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, we designed, evaluated, and piloted a variety of service prototypes. In this playbook, we describe the services generated and piloted as a result of these collaborations and…
Past Event
March 3, 2020
Shaping Up Services: Developing Prototypes for Student Success
Melissa Blankstein at the Educause ELI Annual Meeting
On Tuesday, March 3, Melissa Blankstein is presenting a poster on “Shaping Up Services: Developing Prototypes for Student Success,” at the Educause ELI Annual Meeting in Bellevue, Washington. For more information and to register, please visit the conference website. About the poster What methodologies can higher education institutions employ to develop new services that promote student success? This poster will share a data-driven approach recently implemented across a cohort of colleges: concept testing. Through concept testing, service providers can…
Past Event
February 20, 2020
Student Success Information Interventions: Helping Students Navigate College Services and Resources
Christine Wolff-Eisenberg at DREAM 2020
On Thursday, February 20, Christine Wolff-Eisenberg will be presenting on a panel, “Student Success Information Interventions: Helping Students Navigate College Services and Resources,” at DREAM 2020 in National Harbor, Maryland. Christine will be joined on the panel by Jean Amaral (Borough of Manhattan Community College), Christie Flynn (Pierce College), and Elizabeth Jardine (LaGuardia Community College). For more information and to register, please visit the conference website. About the panel Research recently conducted across seven community colleges has demonstrated the…
Blog Post
December 5, 2019
Making the CCASSE for Support Services
When we interviewed dozens of community college students about their challenges and unmet needs, many reported struggling with navigating college resources. When we subsequently heard from over 10,000 students via survey about the services they need to achieve their vision of success, the overwhelming majority responded positively to a service centered around helping students navigate these resources. Last year, we embarked on the…
Research Report
December 5, 2019
Organizing Support for Success
Community College Academic and Student Support Ecosystems
The Community College Academic and Student Support Ecosystems (CCASSE) project examines how academic and student support services at not-for-profit associate-degree granting colleges are organized, funded, and staffed, and how these services can most effectively advance student success. In spring 2019, we surveyed 249 chief academic and student affairs officers at community colleges across the United States on success measures, services offered, resource challenges and constraints, and vision for future service provision.
Blog Post
November 21, 2019
Increasing Awareness of Basic Needs
Holistic Measures of Student Success for Community College Leaders
Higher education institutions typically use quantitative metrics like year-to-year retention rates, graduation rates, and post-secondary outcomes to measure student success. Most, if not all, institutions are required to report these data to government, regulatory, and accreditation agencies, and use them for benchmarking and measuring progress towards goals. To date, however, the student perspective of what success means — and what barriers stand in the way of achieving it — has often been omitted from these practices. Our research with seven…
Blog Post
October 24, 2019
How to Survey Community College Students
New Report Now Available
Last month, we published a report based on the findings of a survey of over 10,000 students at seven community colleges. While the project itself is aimed at better understanding the needs, goals, and challenges of students, and assessing demand for a number of services that might support their success, a helpful byproduct of this research is what we have uncovered in administering a survey to this population. Today we are publishing…
Research Report
October 24, 2019
Surveying Community College Students
Strategies for Maximizing Engagement and Increasing Participation
Higher education researchers need to employ effective outreach methods in order to connect with the populations they study. For surveys in particular, low response rates can lead to non-response error, decreasing generalizability and representativeness. To combat these issues, Ithaka S+R has developed and tested a suite of outreach strategies that we have employed over the past two decades in our long-running national faculty survey as well as our local surveys of faculty and students.[1] In fall 2018, we surveyed students…
Blog Post
October 22, 2019
Driving Liberal Arts Transfer Pathways
It’s Time for Independent Colleges to Target Community College Students
Every fall, an estimated 1.1 million American students begin their postsecondary education at community colleges. While most (80 percent) intend to earn their bachelor’s degree, less than a third transfer to a four-year institution and only 13 percent actually earn their bachelor’s degree in six years. Transfer practices between two- and four-year institutions are not adequately serving students. What’s more, scalable policies designed…
Blog Post
September 30, 2019
Students Are the Experts
New Report Explores the Needs of Community College Students
How do community college students define their own success? And what services do they think will help them succeed? To find out, we started with a radical idea: students are the experts. Last year, we interviewed dozens of students at seven community colleges on their goals and unmet needs. Today, we release a new report, Student Needs Are Academic Needs, on a…
Research Report
September 30, 2019
Student Needs Are Academic Needs
Community College Libraries and Academic Support for Student Success
The Community College Libraries and Academic Support for Student Success (CCLASSS) project examines student success from the perspective of students themselves, what challenges they face in achieving it, and what services can be developed to effectively support them in their attainment of that success. In fall 2018, we surveyed 10,844 students across seven community colleges to assess the value of and demand for proposed services designed to address students’ expressed goals, challenges, and needs.
Past Event
November 6, 2019
Community College Success: Student Perspectives & Institutional Practices
Rayane Alamuddin and Christine Wolff-Eisenberg Present at College Board Forum
On Wednesday, November 6, from 4:00-5:15 pm, Rayane Alamuddin and Christine Wolff-Eisenberg will present on “Community College Success: Student Perspectives & Institutional Practices” at the College Board Forum in Washington, DC. They will be joined on the panel by Dr. Braddlee, Dean of Learning & Technology Resources at Northern Virginia Community College, Annandale Campus, and Elizabeth Gonzalez, Director of the METAS Center and Hispanic Serving Institution Initiatives, at San Jose City College. For more information about the Forum and to…
Blog Post
July 18, 2019
Improving Articulation of Transfer Credit at CUNY
Although over 87 percent of new community college students at the City University of New York (CUNY) intend to transfer and complete at least a bachelor’s degree, only 11 percent do so within six years. Whether and how a student’s credits articulate during transfer can have significant consequences for these students’ educational trajectory. Students who transfer most or all of their credits are 2.5 times more likely to graduate compared to those who…
Blog Post
March 27, 2019
Three Questions for Giuseppe Basili
For our most recent newsletter, we interviewed Giuseppe “Seppy” Basili, the executive director of the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation (JKCF), a foundation dedicated to advancing the education of exceptionally promising students who have financial need. In this interview, Basili addresses how JKCF’s mission has evolved, what new initiatives it is undertaking, and the challenges the foundation faces as it seeks greater access to higher education for high-achieving, low-income students. 1. You’ve been with…
Blog Post
February 25, 2019
On Being Student-Centered
Reflections on the CCLASSS Project and DREAM 2019
What does it mean for us to be student-centered in our work at Ithaka S+R? In our collaborative research initiative on student success and community college libraries, the Community College Libraries & Academic Support for Student Success (CCLASSS) project, being student-centered means that we have positioned student voices as not only valuable but essential to our work. While our ultimate aim for the CCLASSS project is to design new library…
Blog Post
January 14, 2019
Defining Academic Support Services in Community Colleges
Last year, Ithaka S+R, along with a team of outstanding advisors from a variety of community colleges and college systems, embarked on the first phase of the Community College Academic and Student Services Ecosystem (CCASSE) project, a new research initiative to examine and develop recommendations for how academic support services can more effectively support student success. The project was inspired by earlier findings from the Community College Libraries and Academic Support for…
Past Event
February 25, 2019
Defining Success: Uncovering Community College Student Perspectives
Christine Wolff-Eisenberg at the League for Innovation Conference
Christine Wolff-Eisenberg will join Braddlee from Northern Virginia Community College and Jean Amaral from the Borough of Manhattan Community for a panel discussion on “Defining Success: Uncovering Community College Student Perspectives” at the League for Innovation Conference in New York City. The panel will take place on February 25 at 3:00 pm. Conference registration is now open on the League for Innovation website. About the panel Braddlee, Christine, and Jean will provide an overview of the Community College Libraries…
Blog Post
November 13, 2018
Community College Student Success Project in the Journal of Academic Librarianship
Preprint Available
Last week, the Journal of Academic Librarianship published an article that I co-authored with Braddlee from Northern Virginia Community College on the Community College Libraries and Academic Support for Student Success (CCLASSS) project. The CCLASSS project is focused on understanding (1) how “student success” can be defined so that it is inclusive both of students’ own needs as well as important policy priorities, and (2) what services colleges and their academic libraries…
Blog Post
September 26, 2018
The Landscape of First-Year Programming in Two-Year Institutions
A student’s first year at a new college is a critically important period—academically, socio-emotionally, personally, and professionally. To help incoming college students succeed, many institutions offer First-Year Experience (FYE) programs. But most of the research on the scope and effectiveness of these programs centers on four-year colleges and universities, overlooking an important sector of the postsecondary student population–namely students in two-year programs. To begin to fill this research gap, Ithaka S+R and Two Year First Year (TYFY), with support from the…