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Research Report
October 22, 2020
Student and Faculty Experiences with Emergency Remote Learning in Spring 2020
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 of the pandemic and continued uncertainty, the field can gain valuable and actionable insights from the lived experiences of students and faculty at the height of the crisis.
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Research Report
October 21, 2020
Academic Health Sciences Libraries
Structural Models and Perspectives
Over the past twenty years, the place of the academic health sciences library (AHSL) within the university has changed markedly. These institutions include libraries that may support schools of medicine, nursing, pharmacy, dentistry, veterinary medicine, and public health. Once, they may have been established as separate entities, serving a single school or campus, but many are now consolidated under a larger university library. Have these consolidations and mergers improved the services offered or impacted cost or service quality? What new…
Research Report
October 13, 2020
How to Support and Lead the Urgent Transition to Quality Online Learning in Intro Math
A Resource Guide
The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent shelter-in-place orders enforced throughout the country prompted a rush to emergency remote learning in spring 2020. As institutions enter the next phase of planning with a substantial share of their courses expected to be delivered in hybrid or fully online formats, there is an urgent need to move emergency remote instruction toward more sustainable and intentional models that incorporate evidence-based standards and practices for online learning. It is imperative that higher education institutions capitalize on…
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Research Report
October 5, 2020
Solving Stranded Credits
Assessing the Scope and Effects of Transcript Withholding on Students, States, and Institutions
Attention to the burden of U.S. educational debt, now at $1.7 trillion, has grown in recent years. For too many former postsecondary students—especially Black students—debt they took on to improve their lives and career prospects has instead become a financial hindrance, delaying or undermining their efforts to buy homes, build savings, or provide for their families. The debt burden is especially severe for those who never completed their postsecondary program and therefore did not receive the credentials that might have…
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Research Report
September 30, 2020
Measuring the Whole Student
Landscape Review of Traditional and Holistic Approaches to Community College Student Success
As colleges and universities work to enhance student success, they frequently use traditional outcome-based metrics—such as graduation rates, year-to-year retention, and post-graduation employment—to define that “success.” These measurements, which throughout this report we refer to as traditional metrics, are often prioritized across higher education given their impact on and consequences toward institutional decision-making, benchmarking, and most importantly, funding. While these quantitative metrics can provide a useful—albeit limited—view into student experiences inside and outside of the classroom, they often focus on…
Research Report
September 29, 2020
Measuring a Liberal Education and its Relationship with Labor Market Outcomes
An Exploratory Analysis
The liberal arts and sciences has been a prominent feature of the United States higher education system for centuries, yet it has faced waves of public skepticism since the 1930s. Today, the value of a liberal education is constantly disputed, and colleges and universities face increasing pressure to justify their use of its practices on their campuses. To better understand the value and benefits of the liberal arts and sciences, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has funded a series of…
Research Report
September 9, 2020
Supporting Research in Languages and Literature
Danielle Miriam Cooper, Cate Mahoney, Rebecca Springer, Robert Behra, Ian G. Beilin, Guy Burak, Margaret Burri, Paula Mae Carns, Ashley Champagne, Charles J. Cobine, Heather Cole, Angela Courtney, Anne Donlon, Angela Ecklund, Sarah Evelyn, Darby Fanning, Patricia Figueroa, Nancy E. Friedland, Luis A. González, Pamela M. Graham, Emily Guhde, Julian Haller, Pamela Harris, Heidi Herr, Glenda Insua, Melissa Jones, Sara Kearns, Jessica Keyes, Semyon Khokhlov, Samantha Kirk, Triveni Kuchi, Carl Lehnen, Jade Madrid, Jeremiah R. Mercurio, Catherine J. Minter, James P. Niessen, Marie Paiva, Lis Pankl, Katie Rawson, Matthew Roberts, Alla Roylance, Jonathan Sauceda, Margaret Schaus, Sócrates Silva, John L. Tofanelli, Ellen Urton, Roberto Vargas, Julie Frick Wade, Amanda Watson, Sarah S. Witte
Ithaka S+R’s Research Support Services program investigates how the research support needs of scholars vary by discipline. From 2018 to early 2020, Ithaka S+R examined the changing research methods and practices of language and literature scholars in the United States with the goal of identifying services to better support them. The goal of this report is to provide actionable findings for the organizations, institutions, and professionals who support the research processes of language and literature scholars.
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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…
Research Report
June 11, 2020
Transfer Pathways to Independent Colleges
Every fall, an estimated one million American students begin their postsecondary education at community colleges. In fact, close to half of all postsecondary students start off at these institutions—especially students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. While most intend to eventually earn their bachelor’s degree, less than a third transfer-in to a four-year institution and only 13 percent actually earn their bachelor’s degree in six years. Transfer between two- and four-year institutions is a difficult pathway for students, leaving the well-documented benefits…
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Research Report
June 11, 2020
Executive Summary: Transfer Pathways to Independent Colleges
COVID-19 and its aftermath highlight the urgency for innovation around community college to independent college transfer. The pandemic is expected to produce an increase in community college enrollment due to students’ inability to safely travel further from home and families’ financial situations in the current recession. Meanwhile, independent colleges facing declines in fall enrollment will need to turn to local transfer students as a source of much-needed tuition revenue. Yet, the path from community college to four-year institution is often…
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Playbook
May 18, 2020
Planning, Partnering, and Piloting
A Community College Library Service Innovation Playbook
Service Concept Testing As part of a multi-year student service innovation project, co-led by Northern Virginia Community College and Ithaka S+R, we developed and implemented a new mixed-methods assessment approach: service concept testing.[1] With participation from six additional community college partners and support from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, we designed, evaluated, and piloted a variety of service prototypes. In this playbook, we describe the services generated and piloted as a result of these collaborations and…
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…
Research Report
April 2, 2020
Ithaka S+R US Library Survey 2019
Every three years Ithaka S+R conducts our Library Survey to track the changing strategic directions and priorities of the deans and directors of academic libraries. The data are gathered during a relatively brief window of approximately four weeks. In the case of this most recent survey cycle, that moment in time was the fall of 2019, well before any of us had heard of COVID-19.
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Research Report
February 19, 2020
Expanding Opportunity for Lower-Income Students
Three Years of the American Talent Initiative
Emily Schwartz, Martin Kurzweil, Cindy Le, Elizabeth Davidson Pisacreta, Tania LaViolet, Linda Perlstein, Joshua Wyner
The American Talent Initiative (ATI) was formed in December 2016 to address a persistent issue—specifically, that the American colleges and universities with the greatest resources, and where students have the highest likelihood of graduating, have historically served far too few young people from low- and middle-income backgrounds. The American Talent Initiative has a goal to enroll an additional 50,000 low- and middle-income students at these institutions by the year 2025. ATI is on track to meet its goal. Between 2015-16,…
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Research Report
February 13, 2020
Raising the Bar
What States Need to Do to Hit Their Ambitious Higher Education Attainment Goals
Over the past decade, there has been considerable attention placed on the role that state higher education systems play in preparing residents for a rapidly changing labor market. Given the increasing importance of a postsecondary degree in this market—both due to disproportionate growth in high skilled jobs and an influx of credentialization—educational attainment has become a focal point in discussions amongst researchers, policy advocates, and institutional actors. The attainment rate, calculated as the share of adults possessing a postsecondary credential,…
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Research Report
December 12, 2019
Teaching Business
Looking at the Support Needs of Instructors
Kurtis Tanaka, Danielle Miriam Cooper, Nora Allred, Natasha Arguello, Brian Bourke, Nicole Branch, Cara Cadena, Danielle Colbert-Lewis, Sarah Edmonds, Preethi Gorecki, Karen Grimwood, Marianne Hageman, John Heintz, Ashley Ireland, Jon Jeffryes, Patricia Kenly, Louise Klusek, Andrea Koeppe, Vera Lux, James Mellone, Ximin Mi, Lauren Movlai, Livia Olsen, Ryan Phillips, Anthony Raymond, Linda Rich, Veronica Rodriguez, Peter Rogers, Erin Rowley, Jenn Sams, Carol Sánchez, Edith Scarletto, Jamillah Scott-Branch, Melanie Sellar, Kendra Spahr, Dana Statton Thompson, Charles Terng, Edward F Wall III, Heather Williamson, Qiong Xu, Ann Zawistoski
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…
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Research Report
December 5, 2019
Organizing Support for Success
Community College Academic and Student Support Ecosystems
The Community College Academic and Student Support Ecosystems (CCASSE) project examines how academic and student support services at not-for-profit associate-degree granting colleges are organized, funded, and staffed, and how these services can most effectively advance student success. In spring 2019, we surveyed 249 chief academic and student affairs officers at community colleges across the United States on success measures, services offered, resource challenges and constraints, and vision for future service provision.
Research Report
November 7, 2019
Aligning Many Campuses and Instructors around a Common Adaptive Learning Courseware in Introductory Statistics
Lessons from a Multi-Year Pilot in Maryland
The Adaptive Learning in Statistics (ALiS) project was a multi-year pilot initiative in which faculty members from multiple two-year and four-year public institutions in Maryland used a common adaptive learning courseware in their introductory statistics courses and received training and instructional resources on an active learning and flipped classroom pedagogical approach. The project was organized and led by Ithaka S+R in collaboration with Transforming Post-Secondary Education in Mathematics (TPSE Math), the William E. Kirwan Center for Academic Innovation at the…
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Research Report
October 24, 2019
Surveying Community College Students
Strategies for Maximizing Engagement and Increasing Participation
Higher education researchers need to employ effective outreach methods in order to connect with the populations they study. For surveys in particular, low response rates can lead to non-response error, decreasing generalizability and representativeness. To combat these issues, Ithaka S+R has developed and tested a suite of outreach strategies that we have employed over the past two decades in our long-running national faculty survey as well as our local surveys of faculty and students.[1] In fall 2018, we surveyed students…
Playbook
October 17, 2019
Unlocking the Power of Collaboration
How to Develop a Successful Collaborative Network in and around Higher Education
Recognizing that solutions to today’s complex problems go beyond the boundaries of a single organization or institution, some postsecondary education leaders and training providers are turning to a more focused and deeper level of collaboration to drive both individual and broader systemic change with potential for far-reaching social impact.
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