Showing results for: sustainability
Blog Post
March 4, 2025
Announcing a New Report on the Sustainability of Black Literary Organizations
Magnitude and Bond: A Field Study on Black Literary Arts Organizations
In 2023, with funding from the Wallace Foundation, Ithaka S+R began a research collaboration with Cave Canem, a non-profit Black literary arts organization based in Brooklyn, New York. Last week, we published the report resulting from this joint effort: Magnitude and Bond: A Field Study on Black Literary Arts Organizations. For more on the report, we invite you to visit the Cave Canem website.
Past Event
October 8, 2024
Built to Last? State Systems of Higher Education and OER Sustainability
In recent years, a growing number of states have been offering direct support for OER initiatives, contributing to the widespread adoption of open education across public higher education institutions. Yet, a persistent critical gap in our understanding of OER has to do with the organizational frameworks and sustainability prospects of these OER initiatives. Through a study funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Ithaka S+R conducted a case study research project assessing the impact and implementation of OER programs…
Past Event
September 20, 2023
Approaches to Digital Preservation Product and Service Sustainability
Comparing Alternate Approaches
How do we apply the lessons of ongoing evaluations of digital preservation sustainability within single institutions to the products and services on which this sector increasingly depends? A session at the iPres 2023 conference will look at this key question from different viewpoints to pool best practice and explore the issues to ensure the community can expect more durable systems however they are delivered. Panelists include Ithaka S+R’s Oya Y. Rieger alongside Jack O’Sullivan, Kelly Stewart, Thib Guicherd-Callin, David…
Past Event
December 9, 2021
Assessing the Reliability, Effectiveness, and Sustainability of Data Repositories
Oya Y. Rieger at USDA's Data Stewards Community of Practice Meeting
On December 9, 2021, Oya Y. Rieger will be presenting at USDA’s Data Stewards Community of Practice Meeting. Abstract is below: Assessing the Reliability, Effectiveness, and Sustainability of Data Repositories Researchers feel an increasing pressure to make research data publicly available in disciplinary or general repositories. To enable this process, there need to be standards and processes to assist them in identifying reliable data repositories to ensure that the data will be preserved and made accessible and usable for the…
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Sustainability Implementation Toolkit: About This Project
With generous support from the National Endowment for the Humanities’ Office of Digital Humanities, Ithaka S+R undertook Sustaining the Digital Humanities: Host Institution Support beyond the Start-Up Phase, a research project examining the role played by the institutional host in supporting digital humanities resources created in higher education in the United States. This research project builds on a related JISC-supported study conducted by Ithaka S+R in the UK that concluded in fall 2012. The final report from the UK-based project…
Research Report
June 18, 2014
Sustainability Implementation Toolkit
Developing an Institutional Strategy for Supporting Digital Humanities Resources
What do the digital humanities look like on your campus? What types of projects are your faculty undertaking? Which will require longer-term support, and where will that support come from? What roles do your service units, centers, and digital labs play in the various life-cycle stages, and is this clear to faculty? This toolkit will help administrators create a coherent institutional strategy for supporting digital humanities activities and the valuable outputs that they generate.To get started, follow the three steps below.…
Research Report
November 20, 2013
Searching for Sustainability
Strategies from Eight Digitized Special Collections
This report aims to address one of the biggest challenges facing libraries and cultural heritage organizations: how to move their special collections into the 21st century through digitization while developing successful strategies to make sure those collections remain accessible and relevant over time. Through a cooperative agreement as part of the National Leadership Grants Program, the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) funded the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), in partnership with Ithaka S+R, to undertake in-depth case studies…
Research Report
June 14, 2011
Funding for Sustainability
How Funders’ Practices Influence the Future of Digital Resources
"Funding for Sustainability: How Funders’ Practices Influence the Future of Digital Resources" offers an overview of funders' policies and practices, and provides a framework to assist funders and their grantees in thinking about the key elements of post-grant sustainability planning for digital resources. Over the past decade, philanthropic organizations and government agencies have invested millions of dollars, pounds, and euros in the creation of digital content in the not-for-profit sector. Their grants have facilitated major digitization efforts and encouraged innovative…
Research Report
May 1, 2008
Sustainability and Revenue Models for Online Academic Resources
There is no single formula that Online Academic Resources (OARs) can apply to achieve sustainability, no ‘one-size-fits-all’ plan that any organization can follow to reach a point of financial stability. There are, however, a variety of processes and approaches that can help to improve the likelihood of entrepreneurial success. In an age when traditional content producers – including scholarly publishers and newspapers – struggle to maintain their financial footing in face of the challenges of the digital world, OARs cannot…
Blog Post
June 10, 2025
Is AI Literacy the Trojan Horse to Information Literacy?
Insights from our AI Literacy Cohort Workshops
In April 2025, we launched the Integrating AI Literacy into the Curricula cohort project, in collaboration with librarians and educators at 45 colleges and universities, to conduct research on the current state of AI literacy and develop actionable pathways to providing effective AI literacy programming for students and faculty. In mid-May, we held our first cohort workshops to start thinking through AI literacy using shared language. After reviewing the ACRL information literacy framework and existing AI literacy frameworks,…
Blog Post
June 5, 2025
Examining the Critical Role of Technology in Holistic Credit Mobility
Notes from the Cohort's Second Virtual Convening
In February 2025, Ithaka S+R and Complete College America launched the holistic credit mobility acceleration cohort. This community of practice comprises 11 state higher education and university systems, as well as institutional consortia, that are collaborating throughout 2025 and into early 2026 to identify best practices, policies, and technologies to advance credit mobility nationwide. This is critical to student success, as recent data from the National Student Clearinghouse demonstrates that transfer pathways are becoming increasingly non-linear, multidirectional, and…
Blog Post
April 16, 2025
Sustaining Open Source Software in the Research Enterprise
Call for Participants
Ithaka S+R and the Apereo Foundation welcome applications to participate in Sustaining Open Source Software in the Research Enterprise, a workshop made possible by generous funding from the National Science Foundation, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Higher education serves as a seedbed for highly successful Open Source Software (OSS). Apache, Linux, R, and Python are all examples of currently widely-used, impactful, and sustained open source projects with roots in higher education. Colleges and universities…
Blog Post
April 14, 2025
Holistic Credit Mobility Acceleration Cohort Kicks Off
Takeaways from the Community of Practice
Last month, Ithaka S+R and Complete College America officially launched the holistic credit mobility acceleration cohort. Over the coming year, the 11 state higher education and university systems and institutional consortia participating will convene regularly to develop a unified language around credit mobility, identify best practices, policies, and technologies, and collaborate to move the needle on credit mobility.
Research Report
March 19, 2025
Meeting the Climate Emergency
University Information Infrastructure for Researching Wicked Problems
Contemporary societies face a range of urgent threats to the well-being of individuals, nations, and the natural world. These high stakes “wicked problems,” as Don Waters calls them in this report, present challenges that are simultaneously scientific, technological, social, and creative. They require expertise from across the disciplines to understand, and equally complex public and political engagement, to overcome. Waters makes the case that America’s research universities are exceptionally well-equipped to address these wicked problems.
Playbook
March 5, 2025
Playbook for Transfer Pathways to the Liberal Arts
How to Design and Implement Statewide Pathways from Community Colleges to Independent Colleges
One way to achieve bachelor's degree attainment for community college transfer students at scale is through state- and region-level initiatives dedicated to supporting transfer from community colleges to independent colleges and universities. The Teagle Foundation and the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations’ Transfer Pathways to the Liberal Arts initiative aimed to create such pathways. This playbook draws on the experiences of grantees building pathways in 14 states.
Research Report
February 26, 2025
Magnitude and Bond
A Field Study on Black Literary Arts Organizations
Black literary arts organizations nurture literary talent, establish living literary canons, and generate thriving communities of artists and readers, cultivating Black spaces for sharing the vulnerable processes necessary to invent new ways of saying important things. This report, which explores the sustainability of Black literary arts organizations, grew out of a research process undertaken through a collaboration between Cave Canem and Ithaka S+R. It explores the characteristics of Black literary arts organizations and the adaptive strategies they employ.
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Teaching and learning
We research the evolving nature of instruction in college classrooms, examining how teaching practices are changing over time. By analyzing these shifts, we help our community develop strategies, services, and resources that support the emerging needs of both instructors and students. Supporting instructors Through surveys and other research, we identify and explore the key challenges instructors face and how colleges, universities, service providers, and national organizations can better support them. US Instructor Survey 2024: Findings from a National…
Blog Post
February 7, 2025
Navigating Collaboration
Insights from a Partnership between Bakersfield College and Shafter Public Library
With funding from ECMC Foundation, Ithaka S+R launched the Maximizing Public-Academic Library Partnerships initiative to explore the ways academic and public libraries can collaborate to support students and their broader community’s basic needs. As we investigate how these partnerships manifest in real-world settings through case studies, we’ve had the opportunity to engage with two librarians at Bakersfield College on a collaboration that revitalized the Shafter Library.
Blog Post
February 6, 2025
Convening Stakeholders in the Open-Source Ecosystem Workshop
Announcing a New NSF-Funded Project
Open Source Software (OSS) has great potential to benefit higher education and is increasingly recognized as a core component of open science. The community that supports OSS for teaching and administrative purposes, such as Moodle and MIT Mathlets, has made great progress in seeding, scaling, and sustaining their projects within the academy and has built a robust and sustainable infrastructure. However, academic silos have made it difficult for this community to share knowledge with those developing OSS for research purposes.
Blog Post
January 22, 2025
Announcing a New Report on Open Educational Resources
In the fall of 2023 we announced the launch of a new research project, funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, designed to assess the impact and implementation of open educational resource (OER) initiatives at public institutions of higher education. Today, we are publishing the resulting report, based on an initial literature review and interviews with OER leaders in four US states. In Charting the Course: Case Studies in OER Sustainability, we identify five key takeaways: There…
Research Report
January 22, 2025
Charting the Course
Case Studies in OER Sustainability
Over the past several years, OERs have gained significant traction across higher education, driven by a combination of grassroots campus efforts and state agencies of higher education or system-wide initiatives. The rationale behind these efforts has been clear: to alleviate the financial burden on students by reducing the cost of course materials. But OERs offer other advantages as well, serving as a catalyst for instructional innovation and helping to create a more inclusive learning environment.
Blog Post
January 15, 2025
Reflections on Creating a Cross-Campus Collaboration for Reproducibility
Challenges in reproducible research The ability to reproduce results is a cornerstone of scientific integrity in academic research. Reproducibility in research ensures that results can be independently verified, thereby enhancing the credibility and reliability of findings. However, achieving reproducibility is not without its challenges. Researchers often grapple with organizing their analyses, learning new computational tools, and diligently documenting their data and methodologies. These were some of the challenges raised during interviews with faculty at the University of Victoria (UVic) conducted…
Issue Brief
December 11, 2024
Building a Successful Credit Mobility Platform
Lessons from CUNY Transfer Explorer
Students now have more opportunities to earn college credit at more points in their educational journey than ever before. But moving that earned credit into and between institutions of higher education so that the earned credit applies to a program of study has proven a persistent and stubborn challenge for many students. Studies have concluded that students who lose significant amounts of earned college credit when moving to a new institution have lower chances of graduation.
Playbook
December 9, 2024
Technology Implementation for Higher Education in Prison
A Student-Centered Playbook for Planning, Preparing, and Assessing Implementation Readiness
As both the owner and operator of correctional facilities and the official oversight entity for higher education in prison programming, it is up to departments of correction to determine what technology to make available for education on the inside. However, there are very few resources designed to help correctional leaders determine what technologies are available, how they might benefit students in their facilities, and what drawbacks the new technology might pose.
Blog Post
October 31, 2024
From Service to Study
Exploring Barriers and Expanding Opportunities for Veterans in Higher Education
Introduction On Thursday, September 19, 2024 in New York City, The Teagle Foundation, Warrior Scholar Project (WSP), and Ithaka S+R convened a group of higher education and philanthropic leaders for an off-the-record, roundtable discussion focused on the unique value military veterans bring to college campuses, the barriers institutions face in recruiting and supporting them, and the role nonprofit partners and education funders could play in bolstering these efforts. Committed to the proposition that an expansion of postsecondary educational opportunities for…