tag: Local surveys

You’ve developed a thoughtful questionnaire, gathered responses, generated meaningful, insightful findings, and now want to share these results to more widely inform decision-making. How do you ensure that these findings are communicated effectively to the right individuals? In spring 2016, Penn State University fielded the Ithaka S+R Undergraduate Student Survey and faced the challenging task of communicating findings from the survey, which covered perspectives from 2,000+ students using 37 libraries across 20 campuses. The Ithaka S+R local surveys, which…

While enrollment of international students has grown considerably in the last decade in the United States, investigations into their information practices and library needs are limited in number and are rarely conducted in a manner that enables comparative analysis of international and domestic graduate students. At the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (UIUC), international graduate students represent a significant portion of the total number of graduate students as well as of the total number of international students…

How do various stakeholders in higher education believe that research habits can be best developed and supported?  And how important is the role of the library in developing these skills? Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to share findings on these perspectives from Ithaka S+R surveys of students, faculty members, and library directors. In this webinar hosted by NFAIS, I was joined by Lisa Hinchliffe, Professor/Coordinator for Information Literacy Services and Instruction in the University Library at the…

At the 2016 Library Assessment Conference, we had the opportunity to attend sessions on how to demonstrate the value of libraries, methods for data collection, analysis, and visualization, designing library spaces, and organizational issues facing the community.  The conference, which attracted over 640 attendees, focused on building effective, sustainable, practical assessment. A number of themes that ran across the conference resonate with our ongoing work at Ithaka S+R. Data visualization There was an overwhelming amount of interest from both…

To better understand and support undergraduate student needs, the University Library at the University of California, Santa Cruz contacted Ithaka S+R to run the Undergraduate Student Survey on its campus. Under the leadership of Greg Careaga, Head of Assessment and Planning at the University Library, UCSC ran the survey in spring 2015, and also assisted Ithaka S+R in testing and piloting a new set of questions specifically designed to help academic libraries understand undergraduate perceptions and usage of library…

Since 2014, eleven of the twenty-nine Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) member institutions have participated in running the Ithaka S+R Local Faculty Survey on their campuses, providing a rich dataset of over 4,000 responses across the universities. This morning, we published findings on the research and teaching practices of these faculty members. We have been examining the attitudes and behaviors of academics in the US and the UK every three years since 2000 and 2012 respectively,…

During a time when the University of South Florida Libraries were exploring new service offerings, the Libraries turned to the Ithaka S+R Local Faculty Survey to better understand the research and teaching needs of its faculty members. Matt Torrence, Associate Librarian and Principal Investigator, reports that “responses to the local survey have helped the Libraries make evidence-based decisions regarding the collections, programs, and services we provide to faculty members, as well as assist in benchmarking faculty perceptions and experiences against…

Since 2000, Ithaka S+R has run the US Faculty Survey, which tracks the evolution of faculty members’ research and teaching practices against the backdrop of increasing digital resources and other systemic changes in higher education.  Starting in 2012, Ithaka S+R has offered colleges and universities the opportunity to field the faculty survey, and a newly added student survey, at their individual institutions to gain better insight into the perceptions of their faculty members and students.  More than 70…

Since 2000, Ithaka S+R has run the US Faculty Survey, which tracks the evolution of faculty members’ research and teaching practices against the backdrop of increasing digital resources and other systemic changes in higher education.  Starting in 2012, Ithaka S+R has offered colleges and universities the opportunity to field the faculty survey, and a newly added student survey, at their individual institutions to gain better insight into the perceptions of their faculty members and students.  More than 70…

Since 2000, Ithaka S+R has run the US Faculty Survey, which tracks the evolution of faculty members’ research and teaching practices against the backdrop of increasing digital resources and other systemic changes in higher education. Starting in 2012, Ithaka S+R has offered colleges and universities the opportunity to field the faculty survey, and a newly added student survey, at their individual institutions to gain better insight into the perceptions of their faculty members and students. More than 70…

Since 2000, Ithaka S+R has run the US Faculty Survey, which tracks the evolution of faculty members’ research and teaching practices against the backdrop of increasing digital resources and other systemic changes in higher education.  Starting in 2012, Ithaka S+R has offered colleges and universities the opportunity to field the faculty survey, and a newly added student survey, at their individual institutions to gain better insight into the perceptions of their faculty members and students.  More than 70…

During a time of rapid, evolutionary change at Virginia Commonwealth University, John Ulmschneider, University Librarian, turned to the Ithaka S+R Local Faculty Study in spring 2014 to inform decision-making and strategic planning for the VCU Libraries. VCU had recently developed a new university-wide strategic plan and the Libraries were focused on working within this framework to understand and support faculty and their research. As Ulmschneider explained, “We needed good data to help us understand our current faculty even as we expect their…

Since 2000, Ithaka S+R has run the US Faculty Survey, which tracks the evolution of faculty members’ research and teaching practices against the backdrop of increasing digital resources and other systemic changes in higher education. Starting in 2012, Ithaka S+R has offered colleges and universities the opportunity to field the faculty survey, and a newly added student survey, at their individual institutions to gain better insight into the perceptions of their faculty members and students. More than 70…

Graduate and professional students are among the heaviest users of academic libraries, driven by original research and various types of extensive literature reviews. Faculty members have traditionally had their interests represented through various types of library advisory committees, and in recent years libraries have turned significant attention to undergraduate student success. In many universities, of the library’s major stakeholder groups, graduate students are least well understood and, in these cases, they may offer potentially the greatest opportunity for improvements to…

The Library Assessment Conference took place last week in Seattle, a valuable forum for those gathering and using evidence in support of library management and planning. I attended, with my colleague Alisa Rod, Ithaka S+R’s surveys coordinator. The program included a diverse set of presentations on topics from information literacy to space planning. Ithaka S+R’s local surveys were also featured in a number of sessions on the program. Developing the Ithaka S+R Student Survey Alisa and Heather Gendron,…

In the 2013 US Library Survey, a very high percentage of respondents from doctoral and master’s institutions (94% and 87% respectively) noted that their universities offer some type of online courses.  And roughly half of respondents from doctoral and master’s institutions consider “providing special services for students enrolled in online or hybrid courses” to be a high priority. To best develop such services, librarians need intelligence about how their faculty approach online teaching.  With this in mind, the University…

In our recent report on the 2013 US Library Survey, we noted that faculty members and library directors have different views on the role librarians play in information literacy education. Seventy-two percent of library directors agreed with the statement “Developing the research skills of undergraduate students related to locating and evaluating scholarly information is principally my library’s responsibility,” compared with just 22% of faculty. This is an area where participants in our local faculty survey have paid special attention…

Twenty-eight colleges and universities have signed on to administer Ithaka S+R’s Local Faculty Survey since we initiated this service, and librarians are beginning to tell us about the impact of the surveys on their campuses.  We recently caught up with Jenica Rogers, Library Director at SUNY Potsdam, who is using the survey results as she drafts her library’s next strategic plan.  SUNY Potsdam’s provost also plans to incorporate the data from the survey into her proposal to create a…