This project addresses the problem of improving the achievement, retention, and graduation levels of under-prepared students in two-year college programs. Nationwide almost every two-year college is dealing with poor retention and graduation rates by designing interventions for under-prepared students. Most of these programs have focused on those academic content and study skills areas in which students are deficient. However, since these programs assumed that successful learning is related to the quality of the instruction or the design of the curriculum, they have failed to create students who are independent learners. By contrast, a program devised by Barry Zimmerman, Distinguished Professor of Educational Psychology at The Graduate Center and John Hudesman Professor of Educational Psychology at New York City College of Technology, shifts the learning responsibility from teachers and materials to students by using a self-regulatory learning framework. Significant gains in student achievement have been reported as a result of the self-regulatory training (SRL) process, and the process will be the central feature of a 12-month freshman year experience. The project is funded by the U.S. Department of Education.
* Adapted from 2002 Research Foundation Report