Topic: Teaching with technology
Research Report
June 25, 2020
Student Experiences During the Pandemic Pivot
The spring 2020 term was unmistakably shaped by forces outside of the control of higher education leaders. The COVID-19 pandemic caused colleges and universities across the country—and the world—to quickly pivot in an emergency fashion to online teaching, learning, and research while grappling with a host of complex issues in serving students, supporting faculty and staff, and ensuring their financial viability. Thousands of institutions and millions of students were impacted in the United States alone. In response to…
Blog Post
June 18, 2020
Building a Practice-Sharing Resource on Planning for Fall 2020
Colleges and universities across the country are planning for a fall semester unlike any other. Now more than ever, the health and safety of the campus community and the needs of the most vulnerable students should guide decisions about whether and how to resume in-person campus activities in Fall 2020. To facilitate institutional collaboration and planning during this period of uncertainty, Ithaka S+R is launching an effort to aggregate and synthesize information related to fall reopening…
Blog Post
May 8, 2020
Assessment Across Higher Ed
Join Us for a Webinar on May 13
Over the last few months, all units on campus have needed to plan in unprecedented ways for how best to support students, faculty, and other communities in response to the pandemic. As the activities related to teaching, learning, and research continue remotely during the spring term amid incredibly challenging circumstances, understanding the barriers students and faculty face has become more important than ever. Assessing and addressing community needs is also important for developing appropriate supports for these communities…
Blog Post
May 7, 2020
How Will Postsecondary Education in Prisons Need to Change in Light of COVID-19?
Reflections from an interim report on technological equity for incarcerated college students
The rapid shift to online or distance instruction in the COVID-19 pandemic has been one of the most pressing and challenging issues for the field of higher education. This sudden, mass migration to online learning has crystallized issues of equity and access, as not all students, instructors, or even institutions are equipped to make this leap. Lacking regular access to computers, and with virtually no access to the internet, incarcerated college students, and the programs that serve them,…
Research Report
May 7, 2020
Advancing Technological Equity for Incarcerated College Students
Examining the Opportunities and Risks
Higher education programs that teach in prisons take on a near impossible task: to provide their students with a high-quality education, equal to anything beyond the prison walls, while working under strict constraints. Incarcerated students rarely have access to learning resources typically taken for granted on the outside—computers, books, and internet access are all heavily restricted by various state Departments of Corrections (DOC)—and instructors must work with and around DOC security protocols while planning and teaching their classes. While innovative…
Blog Post
May 4, 2020
Constructive Disruption in Higher Education
Every college and university is having conversations about what to do for the fall term, if not the summer, and considerations and decisions are slowly being made public, with understandable caveats. Even as approaches emerge, one thing should be top of mind: institutions have the opportunity to reconsider the familiar modes of both teaching and learning, and in doing so, improve the efficacy of both. This is not…
Blog Post
April 30, 2020
Leading a Library Today
How Library Directors Are Approaching the Challenges of the Current Moment
Over the past two weeks, Ithaka S+R has organized five roundtables for academic library leaders to help support their leadership during this time of disruption and uncertainty. In total, 40 library directors and two associate university librarians attended these sessions, representing every four-year institutional type. Participants introduced themselves by describing what has been working well for their libraries, the challenges they are facing, and their budgetary expectations. The discussion that followed–with minimum facilitation–then focused on the participants’ most…
Blog Post
April 29, 2020
Announcing the COVID-19 Faculty Survey
Available for Implementation May-June
Throughout the spring term, faculty across the country had to swiftly transition from in-person to remote instruction in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. As the term comes to a close, what can institutions learn from their experiences as they begin planning for the fall? We have partnered over the past month with dozens of colleges and universities to provide much needed student survey data in real time to inform intervention, retention, and…
Blog Post
April 27, 2020
Online Learning During COVID-19
Digital and Educational Divides Have Similar Boundaries
In 2018, nearly 78 percent of households in America had a desktop or laptop computer and 74 percent had a broadband Internet subscription, a significant increase in digital access over the last two decades. Yet, millions of Americans are without access, and the distribution is wildly uneven across geographic regions (as well as demographic subgroups). A digital divide has existed in America for years, but the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed it and made it more relevant than ever…
Blog Post
April 22, 2020
Student Experiences During COVID-19
Actionable Insights Driving Institutional Support for Students
Update April 29, 2020: we are also offering a COVID-19 faculty survey for implementation in May and June. Last week, we began launching our COVID-19 student surveys as part of an initiative to address the pressing needs of the community as colleges and universities have pivoted to online instruction. The survey covers several key topics, including the effectiveness of course formats, the resources students are using, institutional communications, general wellness,…
Blog Post
March 20, 2020
When Online Isn’t an Option
Higher Education in Prisons During a Pandemic
As the announcements of campus closures continue unabated, colleges and universities across the country are struggling to figure out how to adjust their teaching and learning practices, with many moving their courses online. But what does this mean for students who are incarcerated? Building on Ithaka S+R’s ongoing research on how technology can be leveraged towards increasing access to higher education in prisons and more equitable learning experiences, today we are taking a look at how the COVID-19…
Blog Post
March 16, 2020
Dispatches from the Higher Ed #covidclassroom
Teaching and Learning Edition
As the response to COVID-19 intensifies across the US and Canada, higher education institutions are responding by shifting classes online and adjusting pedagogical expectations en masse. Comprehensive tracking of campus closures and academic library responses provides an essential birdseye view of the sector’s response to the pandemic and there are a wealth of resources and case studies about best practices but what is…
Blog Post
March 13, 2020
Getting Online: Lessons from Liberal Arts Colleges
Many of the colleges and universities that are transitioning away from face-to-face courses in response to the COVID-19 pandemic are residential institutions that have not historically provided widespread online instruction. Through multi-year evaluations of the Council of Independent Colleges’ (CIC) Consortium for Online Humanities Instruction and the Teagle Foundation’s Hybrid Learning and the Residential Liberal Arts Experience program, Ithaka S+R has worked with similar…
Blog Post
March 13, 2020
COVID-19 and American Higher Education
The rapid spread of COVID-19 has led to many colleges and universities moving to remote courses for an indefinite period, including in many cases for the rest of the spring semester. Many residential colleges are sending students home, advising them to assume classes on campus will not resume this spring, but instead will continue online. Colleges and universities with more commuter students have also moved to remote learning. CUNY and SUNY college students were informed by New York State Governor…
Case Study
March 13, 2020
Duke Kunshan University
A Case Study of Implementing Online Learning in Two Weeks
The rapid spread of COVID-19 has led a large number of residential, primarily face-to-face American colleges and universities to shift to remote courses for indefinite periods of time. This is a major disruption to normal activities, with pedagogical, social, and economic consequences. It is also a significant organizational and change-management challenge, with a short timeline and no safety net. Duke Kunshan University in Kunshan, China was one of the first US-affiliated institutions that had to deal with this, given the…
Past Event
July 6, 2020
Catharine Bond Hill at Transforming Teaching and Learning
An Inside Higher Ed Event
Catharine Bond Hill is speaking at Inside Higher Ed’s Transforming Teaching and Learning event in Minneapolis from July 6-8. To learn more and to register, please see the conference website. About the event Higher education is easily–and unfairly–caricatured as having changed little for 200 years. Experimentation is abundant in college and university classrooms, physical and otherwise. But as pressure builds to ensure that more people develop the education and skills that employers (and society) need, colleges and their…
Blog Post
December 17, 2019
Reflecting on the Lessons from a Technology Implementation Study in Maryland
Interviews on the ALiS Project
Ithaka S+R recently co-led the Adaptive Learning in Statistics (ALiS) study, a multi-year and multi-campus pilot initiative, which aimed to test whether changing the way introductory statistics is taught in college classrooms–by using adaptive learning technology and active learning pedagogy–would significantly improve course-level learning outcomes for students across a diverse set of two-year and four-year institutions in Maryland. In the interviews linked below, several participants in the ALiS study share their reflections on the project lessons from multiple perspectives,…
Blog Post
December 12, 2019
Teaching Business: New Report Explores the Needs of Business Faculty
Today Ithaka S+R is releasing the first report in a new program focused on supporting teaching practices. In it, we explore the needs of faculty teaching undergraduate business. We started with business as it is consistently one of the most popular majors in the United States, and understanding the needs of faculty in this field can have a large impact on undergraduate teaching and learning. Informed by interviews with 158 business…
Research Report
December 12, 2019
Teaching Business
Looking at the Support Needs of Instructors
Business represents the most popular undergraduate major at American colleges and universities and was seen as the ideal discipline to begin with, especially as the potential number of students to be positively impacted is correspondingly large. The goal of this report, therefore, is to provide actionable findings for organizations, institutions, and professionals who support the teaching practices of business educators. This report describes the teaching practices of business instructors, both those that are common to all college level instruction as…
Blog Post
November 7, 2019
Adaptive Learning Technology + Active Learning Pedagogy in Introductory Statistics
New Reports on Results and Lessons from a Multi-Year, Multi-Campus Pilot in Maryland
There is a general consensus that a quality postsecondary education and credential are critical to success in today’s rapidly changing economy. However, a growing body of evidence has shown that entry-level mathematics courses required to progress toward a degree constitute a formidable barrier to completion of postsecondary credentials, especially for underrepresented minority, first-generation, and lower-income students. Key reasons for this include the disconnected nature of these course offerings and their misalignment with students’ academic and career aspirations, as well as…