Changing Courses: Instructional Innovations That Help Low-Income Students Succeed in Community College

This paper looks at curricular and program redesign strategies being used in community colleges today to speed nontraditional students' advancement from lower levels of skill into credential programs and to shorten the time commitment that earning a credential demands of them. It presents a framework for understanding the range of experimentation with program and class reformatting and redesign, and identifies programs that exemplify promising approaches. The paper concludes with issues and questions that MDRC will need to address in assessing whether to proceed with a research program focused on program redesign efforts geared to working adults' needs.