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Undergraduate research (UGR), one of several high-impact practices (HIPs) in education, can positively impact student retention and graduation rates. However, not all students take advantage of UGR opportunities, with fewer students from underrepresented minority groups, those with first-generation status, and students eligible for a Pell grant or federally subsidized loan. We obtained retention and graduation data from our Office of Institutional Research and Planning for all UGR participants for academic years 2009-2010 to 2016-2017. We specifically focused on data for UGR participants from underrepresented demographics that historically have lower retention and graduation rates than those of the overall student body. We created Sankey-like ribbon diagrams to analyze the characteristics of UGR participants, whether they participated in UGR for 1 year or longer, their class standings when they started UGR, retention rates for 1st- and 2nd-year students for the year following their UGR participation, and graduation rates for all participants. Our data show that irrespective of demographics, students who participated in UGR were significantly more likely to persist in college and graduate within 6 years compared to students who did not. Persistence and success in college may depend on students' socioeconomic status, sense of belonging, and other factors. Assessing the impact of a single HIP, such as UGR, on retention and graduation rates, can, therefore, be complicated. However, our study indicates that UGR participation can significantly improve persistence and success for students traditionally considered "at-risk," irrespective of their socioeconomic status, family background, or class standing. This information can be important for campus leaders and other stakeholders interested in facilitating student success and reducing the equity gap by incorporating UGR in more students' college experiences. We describe our analytical methods and discusses our findings. We also demonstrate the effectiveness of Sankey-like diagrams for visualizing and analyzing large programmatic data sets, and as a tool for communicating program impacts to a general audience.

Taking courses by continuing education (CE) providers is one of the main ways for adults to learning digital skills. CE is provided in either face-to-face (F2F) or online distance learning (ODL) mode. While F2F courses are natural and well-understood, ODL is flexible and less expensive. However, ODL lacks the natural teacher-student and student-student interaction. It is important to find out the factors that affect the adult learner's preferred learning mode for gaining digital skills. This study examined these factors by modifying the Unified Theory Of Acceptance And Use Of Technology (UTAUT). The authors modified the UTAUT by adding the reputation of the provider (RP) and price perception (PP) as moderators. The data from an online survey involving 125 adult learners was analyzed using Smart PLS 3.0. It was found that among the four original UTAUT constructs, social influence is not related to the attitude towards the preferred learning mode. Furthermore, RP has a significant moderation effect on the Performance Expectancy, and Effort Expectancy. Lastly, PP affects the Facilitating Conditions. The implication for CE providers is that they should try to maintain a good reputation for their CE courses. In particular, for MOOC platforms, the providers should have more courses that are created by professional bodies or universities. Interestingly, the adult learners perceive the price as an indicator of facilitating conditions. Hence, the provider should charge their courses that reflect the quality of the infrastructure of, and the support for, the technologies used in delivering those courses. (246 words).

Engaging in undergraduate research is identified as a High Impact Practice (HIP), an experience that improves student learning outcomes. In this paper, we report the differences in the relative rates of increase in skill and knowledge gains associated with early engagement in undergraduate research from students who have little to no prior research experience. We studied the relative rates of changes in novice researchers' perceptions of the progressive development of different research-related skills and conceptual understandings of their own projects, as well as how their attitudes, such as confidence in their own abilities as researchers, develop with continuous participation in mentored research. Knowing the progression timeline for various skills may help program administrators and faculty mentors plan for "just in time" provision of relevant resources and supports.

As PV manufacturing heads towards the multi‐TW scale, it is required to carefully evaluate a wide range of concepts including not only efficiency and cost but also material consumption to ensure sustainable manufacturing of PV technologies. The rapid growth of PV could significantly increase the demand for several materials required in solar cells such as silver, aluminium, copper and even silicon, thereby causing dramatic price fluctuations. Furthermore, the PV manufacturing capacity would be at risk of being limited by the supply of some scarce metals, e.g. with current industrial implementations – screen printing (SP) metallization, the capacities of PERC and TOPCon could be capped at 377 GW and 227 GW with 20% of global silver supply available to the PV industry. In addition, PV systems have ~25–30 years lifespan to ensure low LCOE and emissions. Recycling alone will not provide an immediate solution to overcome the limitation of material consumption in the exponentially growing PV market. It is expected that the Ag usage needs to be reduced to no more than 5 mg/W or even 2 mg/W for all solar cell technologies to allow a multi‐TW manufacturing scale without depleting the global silver supply. Therefore, further advancements in metallization technologies are critically and urgently required to significantly reduce the silver consumption of current screen‐printed contacts in industrial silicon solar cells. This paper firstly presents a roadmap towards the 5 mg/W and 2 mg/W silver consumption targets with various metallization technologies and screen‐printing designs. Subsequently, a hybrid plating on screen‐printed metallization design was proposed to improve the performance and reduce the silver consumption of screen‐printed contacts. The experimental results have demonstrated up to 1.08%abs improvements in fill factor and 0.3%abs gains in cell efficiency. In addition, up to 40%rel reductions in finger silver consumption have been achieved without any sacrifices in the electrical conductivity of such hybrid screen‐printed and plated fingers. This work proposes not only a roadmap but also a promising approach to significantly reduce the Ag demand and benefit sustainable production of industrial screen‐printed silicon solar cells in the TW era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]