Keys to Community College Success is an established first year experience textbook, designed for use with courses related to the college transition and student success for two-year college students, and featuring a tried-and-true college-career-life connection and emphasis on thinking skills and problem-solving. This eighth edition adds a COVID-19 update -- a ten-page frontmatter section with up-to-the-minute information on digital and distributed learning as well as wellness and self-management strategies in the time of COVID-19. Update topics include synchronous and asynchronous learning elements, navigating technology and course websites, coping with stress in a time of crisis, and more. This text is built around a risk and reward theme, showing students how risking action to grow, thrive, and contribute can lead to the rewards of learning, meaningful employment, and community involvement. Inspiring case studies open and close each chapter and show how a two-year college student faced and surmounted a challenge by taking a calculated risk. Thinking skills coverage is another text-wide framework; comprehensive content with research references lend credibility and perspective to concepts, targeted exercises that explore personally relevant situations in context, and sustained focus throughout each topic. The text is tailored to the two-year program experience; throughout the text, detail-level adjustments made in language, concepts, and topics have been made to reflect the needs and concerns of the two-year student. Coverage of resources, topics, and research, including work by Robert Sternberg, Carol Dweck, and Martin Seligman, supports concepts.

The twelve chapters cover all major student success topics -- adjusting to college; values, goals, and time; learning how you learn; critical, creative, and practical thinking; reading and information literacy; listening and note taking; memory and studying; test taking; diversity and communication; wellness and stress management; managing money; and planning for career success. Exercises and features incorporate coaching language and intent, building accountability for the student, guiding the student to create personally relevant work, and asking powerful questions that encourage reflection and the development of self-knowledge.