Topic: Educational Transformation

Public research universities face financial, legislative, and academic pressures to increase access to higher education, make it more affordable, and improve the learning outcomes of their students. Can technology help these institutions meet these challenges? Our researchers at Ithaka S+R, with funding from Lumina Foundation, undertook a study over the course of the 2013/2014 academic year to understand the current environment for public research universities. We interviewed 214 individuals, including academic administrators, directors of online learning, chief financial officers,…

On Monday, October 13, 2014, William G. Bowen delivered the opening address at Rice University’s De Lange Conference, “Technology: Its Potential Impact On The National Need To Improve Educational Outcomes And Control Costs.” We are pleased to publish it here as an Ithaka S+R issue brief. Bowen, who is president emeritus of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and also president emeritus of Princeton University, was the founding chairman of JSTOR/ITHAKA and continues to serve on ITHAKA’s board. The paper explores…

New York, NY—During the same month that The New York Times declared 2012 the “Year of the MOOC,” Ithaka S+R partnered with the University System of Maryland (USM) to determine the feasibility of using MOOCs in new ways—incorporating MOOCs and other online technologies into undergraduate classrooms.  The results of that study are available today:  Interactive Online Learning on Campus: Testing MOOCs and Other Platforms in Hybrid Formats in the University System of Maryland. Over the course of a year,…

How might public flagships meet some of their most pressing challenges? Earlier this month, Ithaka S+R completed a study on behalf of Lumina Foundation to  understand the growing but contested role of technology-enhanced education at these universities.  In this issue brief, Deanna Marcum, Ithaka S+R’s Managing Director, offers an abbreviated look at the study’s findings on how public flagships are addressing the need to increase access to education, contain costs, improve student learning outcomes, and increase institutional efficiency.

In today’s edition of Inside Higher Ed, Carl Straumsheim writes about a new Council of Independent Colleges initiative that “will bring 20 of the organization’s members together in a Consortium for Online Humanities Instruction.” Ithaka S+R is delighted to serve as an advisor for this initiative. In this capacity Ithaka S+R is undertaking three roles: 1. Advising the CIC in the program design, helping to select members of the consortium, and contributing to communications with members. 2. Supporting…

Rebecca Griffiths explores an intriguing and potentially high impact application of online learning: MOOCs in the Classroom? What happens when faculty are encouraged to adapt MOOCs intended for large global audiences for use in traditional classroom settings and curriculum? Can this “off label use” bring benefits like improved learning outcomes or the ability to educate more students in a given course? How can institutions make informed, evidence-based choices about the use of these technology enabled courses on their own campuses?…

ITHAKA hosted our annual Sustainable Scholarship Conference in October, bringing together librarians, publishers, scholarly society leaders, and a variety of others interested in how higher education is changing as a result of new technologies. This year’s theme was “The Question of Quality: New Forms of Grading, Credentialing, and Peer Review in the Digital World.” Videos of the presentations are now available online.  Here are some highlights: Keynote: Kevin Guthrie, president of ITHAKA, focused on some of the key…

This week William G. Bowen, ITHAKA trustee and Ithaka S+R senior advisor, delivered the Tanner Lectures on Human Values, hosted jointly by Stanford’s Center for Ethics in Society and The Office of the President at Stanford University. These lectures are now available as an ITHAKA publication, The ‘Cost Disease’ in Higher Education: Is Technology the Answer? Declining public support and steadily rising costs have caused tuition to rise faster than inflation (and family incomes) for many years. Concerns…

Kevin Guthrie’s column in the new edition of Educause Review summarizes a number of findings from the Ithaka S+R report “Barriers to Adoption of Online Learning Systems in U.S. Higher Education.” He writes, “Digital and network technologies are commoditizing some basic aspects of teaching while they are simultaneously unbundling various aspects of a faculty member’s role.” It strikes me that the underlying drivers here have important implications for institutions as well as for faculty. This “commoditizing” and…

I’m thrilled to announce Rebecca Griffiths’s return to the S+R team, which she’ll be joining as program director for online learning. Rebecca was a founding member of Ithaka, initially helping to create Aluka, and then leading the launch of the Strategic Services practice (now part of Ithaka S+R). In addition to supporting business planning efforts for clients, she co-authored several of Ithaka’s influential papers on the sustainability of digital projects, uses of open source software in higher education, and…

Online learning is hardly a novel concept anymore. It’s hard to find a recent or current college student who hasn’t taken at least one course online. Whether or not they like the experience is another question—some seem to thrive on the flexibility and freedom of working at their own pace, others miss the face-to-face interaction with a live instructor. The real question is not whether online learning is here to stay—it almost certainly is—but whether it is making a fundamental…

Ithaka S+R’s recent report “Barriers to Adoption of Online Learning Systems in U.S. Higher Education” was the result of a months-long research process with input from many different colleges and universities. Our project team was led by Ithaka S+R senior advisor Dr. Lawrence Bacow, a respected educator and advocate for access to higher education, who retired from his post as president of Tufts University in 2011. After the publication of the report, I asked Dr. Bacow to reflect…