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In the summer of 2014, Yale University integrated eight separate units into a unified Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) that advises teachers, tutors students, leverages technology for teaching and learning, and fosters global teaching and learning partnerships. First an idea, then a plan on paper, and finally a new unit by administrative action, the new CTL became more of a reality when five of the eight constituent units moved into a temporary shared space in the summer of…

Dr. Robert Wachter, professor and interim chairman of the department of medicine, University of California, San Francisco, wrote an opinion piece for The New York Times on January 17 in which he argues that measurement in both the health care and education industries has failed us. He concludes by saying, “The secret of quality is love.” He worried that our efforts to measure and improve quality somehow block the altruism that motivates both doctors and teachers to do their…

My colleague Roger Schonfeld and I launched the religious studies project at Pitts Theology Library at Emory University on January 7 and 8 with the first of two methods training workshops for our institutional collaborators. With funding from lead sponsor the American Theological Library Association (ATLA), as well as the Society for Biblical Literature (SBL) and the American Academy of Religion (AAR), the religious studies project brings together local research teams from eighteen higher education institutions to investigate the…

At ALA Midwinter in Boston, we attended several valuable sessions on assessment, evaluation, and data visualization. Here’s a roundup of what we heard. ARL Library Assessment Forum Kenning Arlitsch, dean of the library at Montana State University, reported on his grant project, Measuring Up: Assessing Accuracy of Reported Use and Impact of Digital Repositories. While at Marriott Library at the University of Utah, Arlitsch observed that the reported use of the digital collections at the university’s three libraries was…

At this point, any frequent consumer of higher education news is well aware of the controversial remarks Justice Antonin Scalia made during oral arguments in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin. Many are also likely familiar with the subsequent debates about affirmative action and “mismatched students” that these remarks provoked. In speculating whether black students preferentially admitted to UT Austin might be better off attending “a slower-track school where they do well,” Justice Scalia prompted numerous articles,…

When Paul LeBlanc arrived at Southern New Hampshire University in 2003, he realized that the small, private, tuition-dependent college on the banks of the Merrimack River was destined to decline right along with the downward projections for high school graduates in the state. “I studied the cards we were dealt and looked for the best ones,” he said. In one corner of campus, he found his ace in the hole: a small online operation. Over the next several years, by…

This fall, Ithaka S+R announced plans for a series of new projects to examine the research practices of scholars in three diverse fields. These projects are being conducted in close partnership with scholarly societies and libraries and will provide valuable insight for libraries and other service providers of research support services. I am writing today with an update of the strong progress we are making on the first…

The end of 2015 is upon us, and it seems a good time to look back on what we have done well and to identify areas in which we can do better in the new year.  The good news—this has been a stellar year for Ithaka S+R publications. In the two program areas—Educational Transformation and Libraries and Scholarly Communication—we have issued 21 research reports, case studies and issue briefs. The Educational Transformation program has focused on case…

The issue of rising journal subscription costs in a climate where academic library budgets are primarily flat or in a state of decline, is well-documented and oft-discussed amongst librarians (see, for example, these articles in Library Journal and PLOS One). Yet it is debatable the extent to which academics and students are engaged with this issue. And the possibility of the public-at-large caring? Almost unthinkable. Meanwhile, in Canada, the national public broadcaster recently ran three stories on academic…

Summer bridge programs are a popular approach to helping students close gaps before they start their first year of college. These intensive, four to five week interventions aim to address multiple areas of academic need. Research suggests that summer bridge programs can help students start college on stronger footing, at least in the short term, although benefits fade by the end of two years without additional support. Because of their financial and time costs, summer programs are not a practical…

Amidst the flurry of a vital and long-overdue national conversation surrounding college completion, affordability and debt, and post-graduate employment, it is easy to conceive of the outcomes and value of higher education as mostly economic. Do students learn skills and earn credentials that lead to fruitful labor force participation and economic self-sufficiency? However, as change and innovation sweep across higher education, it is important to keep in mind the broader range of valuable outcomes and goals we hold and ensure…

The National Federation of Advanced Information Services (NFAIS) announced today that Ithaka S+R’s managing director Deanna Marcum will be the recipient of the 2016 Miles Conrad Award. She will receive the award and deliver the Miles Conrad Memorial Lecture at the NFAIS 2016 Annual Conference next February in Philadelphia. Congratulations Deanna! We’re copying the full press release below. For more information about the NFAIS 2016 Annual Conference, please visit the NFAIS website.   For Immediate Release: Ithaka S+R’s Deanna Marcum to Receive…

Earlier this week, Inside Higher Ed reported on the recent announcement by the state of Idaho that, beginning with the class of 2016, the state’s high school graduates would be guaranteed admission into at least some, and possibly all, of Idaho’s eight public colleges and universities. For more than 20,000 public high school graduates, admission into five of the state’s postsecondary schools would be guaranteed while the remaining three – Boise State University, Idaho State University, and University of…

Last month ITHAKA hosted The Next Wave conference. We brought together people from both inside and outside the academy to discuss issues important to the future of education. Our broad theme was data, value, and privacy. As is always the case with ITHAKA meetings, we spent as much time projecting technology’s impact on the future as we did reflecting on how it is affecting us today. In this post I will share a few of the highlights and thought-provoking…

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…

Scholarly communication has become a standard feature of academic and research libraries, and a number of research libraries have established an office of scholarly communication as one of its organizational units. Harvard Library established an Office of Scholarly Communication (OSC) when the Faculty of Arts and Sciences passed the open access policy that would be followed by the other schools and institutes of Harvard. The OSC was meant to help the Harvard schools implement open access. The provost’s office at…

Ithaka S+R has been working with the Council of Independent Colleges for nearly two years in creating a consortium for online learning in the humanities. We have written extensively about the project, in a previous blog post, a report on the findings after the first year of the program, and a case study in which we featured a few faculty from the project and their experiences with the program. Last week, the Council of Independent Colleges held…

Last month, a consortium of 83 selective public and private universities unveiled a plan to build a new college application system. The Coalition for Access, Affordability, and Success plans to develop a “free platform of online tools to streamline the experience of applying to college.” The most notable part of this platform would be its “virtual locker,” a portfolio in which students could store different types of content—from creative work, to class projects, to teacher recommendations—beginning in ninth…

The hallmark method of cultural anthropology is participant observation—total immersion in a social milieu and simultaneous scrutiny of it from an outsider perspective. In a fieldwork project, participant observation may last for months or even years and will usually entail careful documentation in notes, recordings, images, and artifacts. The anthropologist analyzes and interprets observational and other data to create a written ethnography, a document about a culture or society. The anthropological kit also includes a far simpler tool: just being…

As students and their families have become increasingly value-conscious, and competition has heated up, the presidents of small, independent colleges have had to find ways to reduce costs, increase enrollments, or both.  These pressures have often meant curricular changes. The humanities have been hit hard by these trends. As the number of humanities majors has declined, small colleges have struggled to maintain a robust humanities course catalog—and, in particular, a set of needed upper-level courses—for the majors that remain. The…