This month’s blog post was contributed by Pam Rees, Director of the Library at Grand View University.

Pressbooks recently released their most-viewed publications for 2023, a list which highlights the ten titles with the most views, visits, and downloads over the previous 12 months. One of the highlighted titles is College Success, which received 1.5 million page views, 390,000 visitors, and 31,000 downloads. This title’s popularity could be due to its appeal to a broader audience, and several valuable features which are outlined below.

Overall, College Success is a very comprehensive and timeless text aimed at preparing students for the realities of college life. But unlike many other similar titles, it is focused on self-exploration and is specifically designed to help students develop their own success plans. It covers topics that challenge most students entering or returning to college such as time management, test taking, personal health, and career exploration.

Table of Contents

• Chapter 1: You and Your College Experience
• Chapter 2: Staying Motivated, Organized, and On Track
• Chapter 3: Thinking about Thought
• Chapter 4: Listening, Taking Notes, and Remembering
• Chapter 5: Reading to Learn
• Chapter 6: Preparing for and Taking Tests
• Chapter 7: Interacting with Instructors and Classes
• Chapter 8: Writing for Classes
• Chapter 9: The Social World of College
• Chapter 10: Taking Control of Your Health
• Chapter 11: Taking Control of Your Finances
• Chapter 12: Taking Control of Your Future

Strengths:

• Well suited for traditional and non-traditional students, as well as returning and first-time in college students.
• Each chapter is designed as a single standalone module, making it easy to reorder them to tailor to a particular approach.
• Each chapter begins by asking students to assess their skill level, designed to help them create their own plan of success.
• Each chapter concludes with “key takeaways” and includes exercises that work well either as in-class activities or homework, and when paired with the initial self-assessment, can be used as a pre-test/post-test alternative.
• Each section links to outside sources of information and resources that can be used to enhance their success plans.
• Covers virtually all topics of concern for students making the transition to, or back to, college.
• Written in easily understandable language, making it more accessible to ELL students.

Considerations:

• It was published in 2015 before the impact of recent academic and work cultural shifts were felt.
• A few of the videos, pop culture references, and statistics are dated.
• It doesn’t offer a glossary or index, although the Table of Contents is more than sufficient to navigate the content.
• It is long (500 pages) for a publication aimed at First-year students, but given the modularity of the work, an instructor could pick and choose topics to address.

Conclusion

College Success (2015) is a comprehensive text that offers strategies for issues that all students encounter, but unlike some other similar texts, it also addresses problems that non-traditional students are more likely to encounter. The modularity of the chapters makes them easy to remix or use as a supplementary text. It also provides added functionality like external resources and in-class activities. Although it was published in 2015, the approach to the topics is enduring and the topics themselves are universal.

If the slightly dated content is of concern, College Success (2020) by Amy Baldwin, University of Central Arkansas, Lisa August, Canisius College, and James Bennett, Herzing University, is also highly rated.