Predicting First-Semester College Student Success at a Small Technical College
Author: Robert Blanchet
Publisher:
Published: 2016
Total Pages:
ISBN-13:
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The First Year of College
Author: Robert S. Feldman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2018
Total Pages: 367
ISBN-13: 110717628X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAn examination of the first year of college and the intersecting challenges facing today's students, written by top educational researchers.
Predicting First Year Student Success
Author:
Publisher:
Published: 2013
Total Pages: 162
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWith the passing of the Seymour-Campbell Student Success Act of 2012, California community colleges are hoping to improve access and success in our institutions by providing effective matriculation services including, assessment and placement. The purpose of this inferential quantitative study was to determine whether there is a relationship between college assessment test scores, students' academic selfefficacy scores, and academic achievement in first-term community college freshman at Southern California Community College (SCCC). This study utilized a sample of 96 first-term freshmen at SCCC and conducted multiple regression analyses to determine the predictive relationships between assessment, achievement, and self-efficacy variables. Results indicated self-efficacy scores accounted for 12.2% of the total 21.8% of variance in GPA and 9.8% of the total 17.3% variance in unit completion rate. Test-taking efficacy accounted for the most unique variance in semester GPA, math course grade, English course grade, and unit completion rate. Students with higher confidence in their test-taking skills, also have higher GPAs, better course grades, and complete a higher percentage of their units. Math assessment score was also a significant predictor of semester GPA and math course grade, accounting for over 30% of the variance in math grade. Additionally, math assessment score was a significant predictor of test-taking efficacy, indicating that the assessment process may be influencing self-efficacy. The researcher encourages the use of self-efficacy measures in assessment and placement practices and recommends further exploration into the influence assessment and placement may have on student's self-efficacy and subsequent motivation and performance in coursework.
Noncognitive Attributes as a Measure for College Admission
Author: Amanda E. Craddock
Publisher:
Published: 2021
Total Pages: 155
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKCognitive factors, such as standardized test scores and high school grade point average, have historically been used to predict college success. Many colleges and universities place great importance on these cognitive factors when making admissions decisions. However, enrollment leaders question the predictive validity of these factors due to recent studies advocating for the use of noncognitive assessments. The purpose of this study was to examine the role that noncognitive attributes have in predicting college student success and whether their predictive power is greater than that of standardized test scores and high school grade point average. This study employed a quantitative methodology using a correlational predictive research design. The study investigated the Student Strengths Inventory (SSI) assessment results on 1,104 first-year students at a mid-sized public regional comprehensive university in the southeast United States. The SSI results were analyzed to determine if the SSI noncognitive subscales (educational commitment, academic engagement, academic self-efficacy, resiliency, social comfort, and campus engagement) predict first-year grade point average and retention better than standardized test scores and high school grade point average. The study's findings showed that academic self-efficacy, academic engagement, resiliency, campus engagement, high school GPA, and SAT score were statistically significant in predicting first-year GPA. The study's second finding showed that the only significant predictor of retention was high school GPA. Implications of this study are to quantify the role that noncognitive attributes have in predicting student success and how higher education institutions might assess these variables as part of the admissions process.
What the Best College Students Do
Author: Ken Bain
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 2012-08-27
Total Pages: 300
ISBN-13: 0674070380
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe author of the best-selling What the Best College Teachers Do is back with more humane, doable, and inspiring help, this time for students who want to get the most out of college—and every other educational enterprise, too. The first thing they should do? Think beyond the transcript. The creative, successful people profiled in this book—college graduates who went on to change the world we live in—aimed higher than straight A’s. They used their four years to cultivate habits of thought that would enable them to grow and adapt throughout their lives. Combining academic research on learning and motivation with insights drawn from interviews with people who have won Nobel Prizes, Emmys, fame, or the admiration of people in their field, Ken Bain identifies the key attitudes that distinguished the best college students from their peers. These individuals started out with the belief that intelligence and ability are expandable, not fixed. This led them to make connections across disciplines, to develop a “meta-cognitive” understanding of their own ways of thinking, and to find ways to negotiate ill-structured problems rather than simply looking for right answers. Intrinsically motivated by their own sense of purpose, they were not demoralized by failure nor overly impressed with conventional notions of success. These movers and shakers didn’t achieve success by making success their goal. For them, it was a byproduct of following their intellectual curiosity, solving useful problems, and taking risks in order to learn and grow.
Student Development in College
Author: Nancy J. Evans
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Published: 2009-11-05
Total Pages: 616
ISBN-13: 0470557125
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe second edition of Student Development in College offers higher education professionals a clear understanding of the developmental challenges facing today's college students. Thoroughly revised and updated, this edition includes new integrative theories of student development, expanded coverage of social identity theories, a targeted focus on higher education-related research, a current review of student development research and application, and reconceptualization of typology theories as a way to understand individual differences. Praise for the Second Edition of STUDENT DEVELOPMENT IN COLLEGE "Student Development in College is a rich, comprehensive exploration of the major theoretical perspectives that inform development. The authors' attention to nuances and complexities results in a substantive history of theory development and a careful story about how various perspectives evolved yielding contemporary theorizing. The book is a masterful blend of theoretical lenses and their use in designing developmentally appropriate practice for diverse populations of contemporary college students. It is an excellent resource for all educators who work on college campuses." Marcia Baxter Magolda, Distinguished Professor, Educational Leadership, Miami University "This is an invaluable work for anyone seeking an introduction to college student development theories or those seeking to update their existing knowledge. It offers a thorough and complex review of both the foundational theories and the newer often more culturally relevant theories and models." Raechele L. Pope, program coordinator, Higher Education Program, University at Buffalo "The original book was a tremendous contribution to the field of higher education and especially student affairs. After more than ten years, this revision is a timely and focused enhancement to the literature that nurtures quality professionals to think differently about topics relevant to our field. Well done a second time around!" Gregory Roberts, executive director, ACPA College Student Educators International
Improving the First Year of College
Author: Robert S. Feldman
Publisher: Psychology Press
Published: 2005-01-15
Total Pages: 365
ISBN-13: 1135600899
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe first year of college represents an enormous milestone in students' lives. Whether attending a four-year or two-year institution of higher education, living on campus or at home, or enrolled in a highly selective school or a college with an open-admissions policy, students are challenged in unique and demanding ways during their first year. Although many students rise to the challenges they face, for some the demands are too great. Retention rates beyond the first year are disappointing: one third of first-year students seriously consider leaving college during their first term, and ultimately one half of all students who start college complete it. What are the factors that impact students during their first year? How can the academic and social experiences of first-year students be optimized? What can we do to improve retention rates to maximize the number of students who complete college? Improving the First Year of College employs a variety of perspectives from leading researchers and student-service providers to address these questions and examine the first year of college. This volume also highlights the development of learning communities and coaching, as well as how technology impacts students' first year. Perhaps most important, the book provides examples of "best practices," as determined through research by leaders in the field, to permit educators to draw on their experiences.
Universities in Transition
Author: Heather Brook
Publisher: University of Adelaide Press
Published: 2014-12
Total Pages: 260
ISBN-13: 1922064831
DOWNLOAD EBOOKUniversities are social universes in their own right. They are the site of multiple, complex and diverse social relations, identities, communities, knowledges and practices. At the heart of this book are people enrolling at university for the first time and entering into the broad variety of social relations and contexts entailed in their ‘coming to know’ at, of and through university. For some time now the terms ‘transition to university’ and ‘first-year experience’ have been at the centre of discussion and discourse at, and about, Australian universities. For those university administrators, researchers and teachers involved, this focus has been framed by a number of interlinked factors ranging from social justice concerns to the hard economic realities confronting the contemporary corporatising university. In the midst of changing global economic conditions affecting the international student market, as well as shifting domestic politics surrounding university funding, the equation of dollars with student numbers has remained a constant, and has kept universities’ attention on the current ‘three Rs’ of higher education — recruitment, retention, reward — and, in particular, on the critical phase of students’ entry into the tertiary institution environment. By recasting ‘the transition to university’ as simultaneously and necessarily entailing a transition of university — indeed universities — and of their many and varied constitutive relations, structures and practices, the contributors to this book seek to reconceptualise the ‘first-year experience’ in terms of multiple and dynamic processes of dialogue and exchange amongst all participants. They interrogate taken-for-granted understandings of what ‘the university’ is, and consider what universities might yet become.
Academically Adrift
Author: Richard Arum
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2011-01-15
Total Pages: 272
ISBN-13: 0226028577
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn spite of soaring tuition costs, more and more students go to college every year. A bachelor’s degree is now required for entry into a growing number of professions. And some parents begin planning for the expense of sending their kids to college when they’re born. Almost everyone strives to go, but almost no one asks the fundamental question posed by Academically Adrift: are undergraduates really learning anything once they get there? For a large proportion of students, Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa’s answer to that question is a definitive no. Their extensive research draws on survey responses, transcript data, and, for the first time, the state-of-the-art Collegiate Learning Assessment, a standardized test administered to students in their first semester and then again at the end of their second year. According to their analysis of more than 2,300 undergraduates at twenty-four institutions, 45 percent of these students demonstrate no significant improvement in a range of skills—including critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing—during their first two years of college. As troubling as their findings are, Arum and Roksa argue that for many faculty and administrators they will come as no surprise—instead, they are the expected result of a student body distracted by socializing or working and an institutional culture that puts undergraduate learning close to the bottom of the priority list. Academically Adrift holds sobering lessons for students, faculty, administrators, policy makers, and parents—all of whom are implicated in promoting or at least ignoring contemporary campus culture. Higher education faces crises on a number of fronts, but Arum and Roksa’s report that colleges are failing at their most basic mission will demand the attention of us all.
Student Success in College
Author: George D. Kuh
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Published: 2011-01-07
Total Pages: 422
ISBN-13: 1118046854
DOWNLOAD EBOOKStudent Success in College describes policies, programs, and practices that a diverse set of institutions have used to enhance student achievement. This book clearly shows the benefits of student learning and educational effectiveness that can be realized when these conditions are present. Based on the Documenting Effective Educational Practice (DEEP) project from the Center for Postsecondary Research at Indiana University, this book provides concrete examples from twenty institutions that other colleges and universities can learn from and adapt to help create a success-oriented campus culture and learning environment.
