In mathematics, learners often spontaneously draw on prior knowledge when learning new ideas. In this study, we examined whether the specific diagrams used to represent more familiar (i.e., whole number division) and less familiar ideas (i.e., fraction division) shape successful transfer. Undergraduates (N = 177) were randomly assigned to…

Despite the robust literature on the effects of financial aid, the effects of financial aid loss remain largely understudied. We employ a regression discontinuity design, leveraging a minimum GPA scholarship renewal threshold, to examine the effect of losing state merit aid eligibility on college student stop-out, transfer, and bachelor's degree…

This full paper concerns the use of gesture analysis to guide instructional approaches in engineering education. Engineering is rife with abstract mathematics and processes for quantifying physical phenomena. In engineering instruction, "formalisms first" is a practice that privileges formalisms over grounded and applied ways of knowing…

This study examined the extent to which prior beliefs and reading instructions impacted elements of a reader's mental representation of multiple texts. College students' beliefs about childhood vaccinations were assessed before reading two anti-vaccine and two pro-vaccine texts. Participants in the experimental condition read for the purpose of…

Using rich administrative data from the California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office that tracks each student longitudinally, this analysis examines how the onset of the pandemic affected student enrollment duration. Data are disaggregated by student characteristics and college campuses in order to understand variable impacts and equity…

Food insecurity is widespread among college students in the United States. CalFresh food benefits, known federally as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, can help students in California pay for food, but may not reach all eligible students. CalFresh enrollment rates among students have been difficult to estimate due to…

This report is developed with dual foci: (1) justifying attainment of the grant milestones in Year 2; and (2) supporting ongoing improvement of the program performance, to evaluate the second year operation of a five-year grant, "Promoting Excellence in Graduate Education and Increasing Hispanic STEM Related Degree Completion".…

This article provides evidence about predictive relationships between features of community college interventions and their impacts on student progress. This evidence is based on analyses of student-level data from large-scale randomized trials of 39 (mostly) community college interventions. Specifically, the evidence consistently indicates that…

Support for higher education is a known and well-documented venue for financial transfers within families, but practices of family support beyond college are less understood. Drawing on interviews with recent master's degrees recipients who have student debt, I find key class differences in the process and forms of family financial assistance for…

This qualitative investigation explored the social and academic experiences of socially anxious adolescents and young adults in Portugal and the US as they lived through the restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants were 10 Portuguese adolescents (mean age = 16.9 years; 50% female) and 7 young adults in the US (mean age = 19.67…

Accounting for complex interactions between contextual variables and learners' individual differences in aptitudes and background requires building the means to connect and access learner data at large scales, across time, and in multiple contexts. This paper describes the ASU Learning@Scale (L@S) project to develop a digital learning network…

The Massachusetts Department of Higher Education (DHE) and the state's 28 public colleges and universities have collaborated over the last fifteen years to make easier and more transparent the process of transferring from a community college to a bachelor's degree program in one of the state's public colleges or universities. In this report, we…

This paper documents the experience of California college students in the midst of the pandemic as their academic and home lives were disrupted. The analysis relies on a survey sent to all financial aid applicants statewide. Survey respondents include nearly 100,000 students enrolled in both two-year and four-year postsecondary institutions.…

Nearly half of students who enter college do not graduate. The majority of efforts to increase college completion have focused on supporting students before or soon after they enter college, yet many students drop out after making significant progress towards their degree. In this paper, we report results from a multi-year, large-scale…

Only 11% of community college (associate's-degree) students transfer vertically and obtain a bachelor's degree within six years, despite over 80% originally intending to do so. These leaks in the transfer pipeline disproportionately affect students from underrepresented groups, who are more likely to attend community colleges and to leak out of…