Engaging CCCOnline Students

Where Are Our Students?

CCCOnline serves students from 13 land colleges around the state and one in Montana. 88% of our students are Colorado residents.

For every 10 CCCOnline students, typically, two come from Front Range, two from Pikes Peak, and one each from Arapahoe, Community College of Aurora,  Community College of Denver, Red Rocks, and Pueblo. 

Infographic: Home College Breakdown
Text-Only Version: Home College Breakdown

Who Are Our Students?

Between six and seven of ten in any given CCCOnline class are women, and 38% are minority.

More than two in five are first-generation college goers, 49% are aged 25 or older, and over a quarter are taking at least one developmental course.

Working Adult Students

These numbers are mirrored around the country, where a third of college students are over age 25.

Overall, these students work long hours: a recent report shows that, nationwide, 70-80% of college students are active in the labor market, and working learners aged 30-54 are most likely to work at least 40 hours a week while enrolled in classes (Carnevale et al., 2015).

These adult students juggle jobs and family, and have as their top educational priority getting the skills to advance at work (Curran, 2014; Carnevale et al., 2015).

In a similar vein, according to a survey of over 50,000 students at 10 community colleges, common top challenges to success are personal: the top three are balancing work with school, paying expenses, and meeting demands of family and friends (Porter et al., 2019).

Students in your CCCOnline classes likely are making sacrifices in time and money to be in your class, and they need your help and encouragement to succeed.

Tips for Working with Adult Learners

Older nontraditional students are not only motivated differently than young college goers, they learn differently, too. Malcolm Knowles established several principles of adult learning based on the needs of the adult learner. These principles include:

1. The need to know. Adults need to know why something is important, so instructors need to make this clear to them.
2. Readiness. Adults want to learn relevant things, and the most relevant things help them with their jobs. It is good to remind students, for example, that writing essays improves their job-ready skills, and they will need to know how to write when they go into the working world.
3. Motivation. Adults are internally motivated, and they want to do well. Work with that desire to succeed and make the criteria for success as clear and attainable as possible.

To this Raymond Wlodkowski adds important insights on what motivates adults to learn:

1. They learn when they feel safe and included in the learning environment. One way to help students feel like a member of a community of learners is to make sure they all know each other and the instructor in some personal way (have ice breakers, share a little about why you are present).
2. Students feel motivated when they are positive about the material and they feel it is relevant to their goals. To foster this, it is good to establish what the instructional objectives for the class are and let students contribute some of their own objectives for being here. It is of course also good to be upbeat and energetic yourself!
3. Students feel motivated when they feel the learning is meaningful. Avoid “busy work” assignments at all costs, and where possible, allow students to participate in choosing subjects to study, questions to review, deadlines to meet.

References

American Association of Community Colleges (2014). 2014 Fact Sheet. In About Community Colleges. No longer available online.

Carnevale, A.P, Smith, N., Melton, M., & Price, E.W. (2015). Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce. Learning While Earning: The New Normal. https://cew.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/Working-Learners-Report.pdf

Curran, S. (2014). Traditional and Non-Traditional Learners in Online Education. The Evolllution. https://evolllution.com/revenue-streams/distance_online_learning/traditional-non-traditional-learners-online-education/

Porter, S.R., & Umbach, P.D. (2019). What challenges to success do community college students face? Raleigh, NC:
Percontor, LLC. https://www.risc.college/blog/new-report-community-college-student-success

Note: Data for the infographic cover academic years 2015-2017; students included were assigned a grade in a CCCOnline class.

Image citation:

Arif Fajar Yulianto. Parent [Icon]. Retrieved July 18, 2019, from https://thenounproject.com/