Course Project Overview: Effective Education Practices This course explores the changing student population and introduces key concepts surrounding their persistence and achievement. This body of research has serious implications for the success of higher education as a whole. Researchers at the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) (Horn, Peter, & Rooney, 2002) have identified 7 significant “ risk attributes” that have a negative impact on whether students stay in college and attain their degrees. These factors characterize an increasing number of today’s undergraduates. They include: · Delayed post-secondary enrollment (by one or more years) · Part-time or full-time employment · Financial independence · Parenthood (or custody of other dependents—especially single parenthood · High school dropout or GED status Your Course Project: Effective Education Practices described below requires you to investigate learning and development challenges for a particular subgroup of students. Also, you will look at research on learning environments that promote student engagement, and you will recommend an educationally effective practice for a subgroup of students at your institution. Consider this scenario: The Board of Regional U. has charged the University President with increasing the number of students who graduate each year. Regional U. boasts a very diverse student body, and the Board has observed that graduation rates seem to vary among different student groups. Leaders of the University have decided that the best and most equitable way to improve the general graduation rate is to improve graduation rates for those subgroups. As a first step in the process, the University President has convened a Taskforce to gather information on the different student groups and present the findings at a joint faculty/staff training session. She has appointed 10 members to the Taskforce, including you. Each member is charged with recommending an educational practice that will promote the success of a particular subgroup. To accomplish this task, you will need to research learning/development challenges for the subgroup and educationally effective practices that have been implemented at other universities. You will deliver your recommendation (with supporting references) in the form of a PowerPoint presentation at a joint faculty/staff training session. You’ll have the opportunity to work on pieces of this project throughout this course. More detailed instructions for each piece will be provided in the appropriate week. You will not need to submit something to your Instructor each week; in some cases, you’ll work on a piece one week and submit it in a later week. Here is an outline of the major project elements: Week 1: Select a student group for further research based on descriptive and demographic data. Week 2: Research the learning and development challenges facing your group. Create a 3- to 4-page Annotated Bibliography in which you cite and describe .