FOCUS ON COMMUNITY COLLEGE SUCCESS, 4th Edition, speaks directly to community college students, delivering strategies for navigating the unique challenges of juggling school, family, work, and living/studying at home. Updated with the most current research, this forward-thinking text continues to strive to improve student retention, motivation, and engagement, as well as offer proof of student progress and course efficacy through the Entrance and Exit Interviews. The fourth edition includes expanded coverage on resilience, with strategies for assessing and building resilience. A revised section on the importance of group work gives students the tools they need to successfully collaborate. Now available with MindTap, a fully online, highly personalized learning experience built upon FOCUS ON COMMUNITY COLLEGE SUCCESS. MindTap combines learning tools--readings, multimedia, activities, and assessments --into a singular Learning Path that guides students through their course. Staley, a leader in the field of motivation, helps students develop realistic expectations of what it takes to learn while encouraging and engaging them with direct applications and immediate results.

Constance Staley’s FOCUS ON COMMUNITY COLLEGE SUCCESS is uniquely equipped to turn the tides. Visually appealing, research-based, and highly motivational, this text thoroughly engages students with direct applications and immediate results. Staley, one of the best-known names in the field of motivation and focus increases the credibility of the college success course by providing tools that help students, and she improves retention specifically designed for community college students. Thoroughly researched, the text covers the topics most important to student success and incorporates underlying themes of motivation and self-discipline throughout. Rather than talking down to students or speaking over their heads, FOCUS ON COMMUNITY COLLEGE SUCCESS initiates a personal and informal conversation with readers, directly connecting them with and drawing them into text discussions. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version.

In the United States, 1,200 community colleges enroll over ten million students each year—nearly half of the nation’s undergraduates. Yet fewer than 40 percent of entrants complete an undergraduate degree within six years. This fact has put pressure on community colleges to improve academic outcomes for their students. Redesigning America’s Community Colleges is a concise, evidence-based guide for educational leaders whose institutions typically receive short shrift in academic and policy discussions. It makes a compelling case that two-year colleges can substantially increase their rates of student success, if they are willing to rethink the ways in which they organize programs of study, support services, and instruction. Community colleges were originally designed to expand college enrollments at low cost, not to maximize completion of high-quality programs of study. The result was a cafeteria-style model in which students pick courses from a bewildering array of choices, with little guidance. The authors urge administrators and faculty to reject this traditional model in favor of “guided pathways”—clearer, more educationally coherent programs of study that simplify students’ choices without limiting their options and that enable them to complete credentials and advance to further education and the labor market more quickly and at less cost. Distilling a wealth of data amassed from the Community College Research Center (Teachers College, Columbia University), Redesigning America’s Community Colleges offers a fundamental redesign of the way two-year colleges operate, stressing the integration of services and instruction into more clearly structured programs of study that support every student’s goals.

According to recent market research, students are less academically engaged than ever before--a downward trend that has nothing to do with intellect, but everything to do with motivation, focus, and discipline. FOCUS ON COLLEGE SUCCESS is uniquely equipped to turn the tides. Visually appealing, research-based, and highly motivational, FOCUS thoroughly engages students with direct applications and immediate results. Written by Constance Staley, one of the best-known names in the field of motivation, this text increases the credibility of the college success course by providing tools that help students succeed and thereby improve institutional retention rates. Thoroughly researched, the text covers the topics most important to student success and incorporates underlying themes of motivation and self-discipline throughout. Rather than talking down to students or speaking over their heads, FOCUS ON COLLEGE SUCCESS strikes a personal and informal conversation with readers--directly connecting with them and drawing them into text discussions. Many students today are overoptionalized and overobligated. FOCUS ON COLLEGE SUCCESS addresses those issues head-on, creating teachable moments--and concrete results--in every class period. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version.