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The emergency shift to remote learning that took place during the spring 2020 term in response to the COVID-19 pandemic created unprecedented disruptions for students and faculty across colleges and universities, nationwide, and globally. As online and hybrid models of learning become prolonged solutions for institutions seeking to contend with the realities and continued uncertainties of the pandemic, the field can gain valuable and actionable insights from the lived experiences of students and faculty at the height of the…

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, colleges and universities made an almost instantaneous switch from their traditional modes of learning to remote instruction in the middle of the spring 2020 term. Although remote teaching and learning have been used and well-understood in some corners of the academic world for some time, its implementation on this scale by academic leaders and faculty with little or no experience in remote teaching, is unprecedented. The new normal requires new investments and…

The COVID-19 pandemic has put a sudden stall on social and economic activities throughout the world, dramatically changing our lives in just a matter of a few weeks, and increasingly raising concerns about a possible years-long recession. Now entering a month into what is becoming an ever more routine reality of teaching, learning, and working from home, colleges and universities are beginning to transition from the emergent need to preserve health and safety…

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…

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,…

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…

The Council of Independent Colleges (CIC), in collaboration with Ithaka S+R, recently concluded its four-year initiative with the Consortium for Online Humanities Instruction (2014-18), which provided opportunities for two distinct cohorts of private liberal arts colleges to first design and teach online humanities courses in their own institutions and later to revise and offer the same courses to all students in the Consortium.[1] The second Consortium just completed its final year of work and participants shared valuable insights…

In today’s economic climate, where there is an increasing demand from students and families for academic programs that are likely to lead to well-paying jobs, the pressure to innovate is high for many higher education institutions. This pressure is especially high for small independent colleges when part of the innovation discussion involves the restructuring of existing course offerings to increase enrollment and reduce instructional costs – which may run counter to their longstanding mission of offering small classes and providing…

Earlier this year, Ithaka S+R was awarded a $2.46 million, multi-year grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop, test, and scale new models of entry-level math instruction in higher education. Working closely with the project partners including TPSE Math (Transforming Post-Secondary Education in Mathematics), Acrobatiq, William E. Kirwan Center for Academic Innovation, the Urban Institute, as well as the two institutions that were part of a pre-pilot study during the 2016-17 academic…