Major Findings & Recommendations
"The qualitative results shed light on all three of these program elements[contextualized instruction, career development, and transition services], showing that all demonstration sites used innovative instructional approaches, with most using some form of contextualized instruction. The approaches were highly varied, with numerous reasons given to explain local variation, including the need to address local community college policies and practices, the need to serve different student populations, and the need to meet different industry sector and occupational requirements. Within the adult education model, different approaches were used to serve diverse student populations, including finely tuned practices to serve subpopulations" (p.17). "In addition, transition services and the transition coordinator emerged as a core component at five of the six sites. Qualitative results suggest that persons hired in this position should possess extensive knowledge of diverse adult student populations and of the services offered by the college and community-based organizations and community agencies. Transition coordinators played an important role in orienting, guiding, and advocating for the students, and they were critically important to coordinating support services that were sometimes disconnected within the community college and difficult for students to navigate" (p.17-18). "The quantitative results provided additional support for the requirement to include career development and transition services in the bridge definition. The demonstration projects that provided most students with career orientation, admissions assistance, and advising had better outcomes than those that did not. Moreover, the demonstration projects in which students had frequent interactions with an assigned transition coordinator, and that provided more students with transportation assistance, had better outcomes than those that did not"(p.18). (Abstractor: Author)