COMMUNITY COLLEGE STUDENT SUCCESS COURSES: THE STUDENT PERSPECTIVE

This study explores student success courses from the student perspective to answer three questions: What topics do students find the most useful? What teaching methods do the students find most helpful? How can these courses be customized to better serve the students? The purpose of this study is to interview students from a number of community colleges, exploring these topics from the student perspective with the goal of orientation course enhancement. Although students reported the skills and information provided in these orientations classes to be useful, the usefulness of specific topics varied according to the precollege preparation of each student. The authors offer suggestions for creating specialized orientation programs and courses to fit the needs of the diverse community college population.