Publications
Issue Brief
March 26, 2015
Meeting Researchers Where They Start
Streamlining Access to Scholarly Resources
Instead of the rich and seamless digital library for scholarship that they need, researchers today encounter archipelagos of content bridged by infrastructure that is insufficient and often outdated. These interconnections could afford opportunities to improve discovery and access. But in point of fact, the researcher’s discovery-to-access workflow is much more difficult than it should be.[1] …researchers’ expectations are being set not by improvements relative to the past but rather by reference to consumer internet services A different paper…
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Research Report
March 18, 2015
Personalizing Post-Secondary Education
An Overview of Adaptive Learning Solutions for Higher Education
For the past decade, the conversation about technology’s potential to transform higher education has grown louder and larger, encompassing more voices, opinions, and topics, and driving changes at a global scale. Participants in this discussion speculate about the possibilities for Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) to make quality education more broadly accessible to an international set of learners, deliberate over the value of leveraging business analytics to help students through degree programs, and debate the impact of technology-enabled learning on…
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Research Report
March 11, 2015
Online Learning in Postsecondary Education
A Review of the Empirical Literature (2013-2014)
Courses that incorporate online learning are increasingly a fact of life for American college and university students.[1] The share of postsecondary students in the United States who took at least one online course has increased every year for the past decade—to a high of 34% in the fall semester of 2012.[2] Even as the prevalence of online learning continues to grow, however, there remains a dearth of rigorous research done on the learning outcomes associated with…
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Research Report
March 4, 2015
The Effects of Rising Student Costs in Higher Education
Evidence from Public Institutions in Virginia
In Virginia and elsewhere, higher education faces an unstable future. Demographic, economic and technological changes are driving transformation in all that we do. Higher education – access to it, knowledge created and disseminated through it, and outcomes produced by it – will be the key to innovation and prosperity. At the same time, public higher education faces an unprecedentedly challenging landscape as it seeks to fulfill its public purposes and responsibilities. Its transformative potential for our nation is at risk. The risk…
Case Study
January 29, 2015
Making Assessment Work
Lessons from the University of Pittsburgh
The past two decades have seen increasing pressure for greater transparency about student learning from both within and outside higher education. Internally, there is a desire to understand and improve the efficacy of curriculum, pedagogy, and student support. Externally, there is a desire to hold institutions—particularly public institutions—accountable. As a result, in the early 2000s the major higher education accreditors began to review colleges’ processes for setting student learning outcomes, assessing those outcomes, and responding to the results.[1]…
Case Study
January 20, 2015
In Pursuit of Excellence and Inclusion
Managing Change at Arizona State University
“The New American University.” To the outsider, or to the leader of another higher education institution, it may sound like a brash and arrogant boast. On the inside, for a person associated with Arizona State University (ASU), it can be an aspirational expression of pride and the opportunity to take a leadership role in U.S. higher education. ASU and its president, Michael Crow, seem to conjure up strong reactions from observers and competitors, both positive and critical. For example, Newsweek…
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Issue Brief
December 19, 2014
Innovation in Teaching and the Freedom to Teach
Last year the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) released a statement on the freedom to teach which asserts several rights for faculty, including the right to determine the texts and assessments within their courses. While recognizing that “common course syllabi and examinations are… typical,” the statement emphasizes that these “should not be imposed by departmental or administrative fiat.” This issue brief, “Exploring the Contours of the Freedom to Teach,” considers the potential impact of AAUP's statement on the academy. Authors Lawrence…
Issue Brief
December 17, 2014
Does Online Learning Have a Role in Liberal Arts Colleges?
Liberal arts colleges are known for low professor to student ratios, intimate seminar classes and highly personalized undergraduate experiences. On the surface, it is not obvious how online learning fits with this picture. But these days liberal arts colleges face many of the same pressures as larger universities – resource constraints, the growth of non-traditional students with more extracurricular responsibilities, even uncertainty about how a liberal arts education should evolve to stay relevant in a digital world. There is an…
Research Report
December 11, 2014
Technology-Enhanced Education at Public Flagship Universities
Opportunities and Challenges
Public research universities are under great pressure to increase access, lower costs, and improve instruction, even as they face diminishing financial support from the states they serve. Against this backdrop, Ithaka S+R, with funding from Lumina Foundation, undertook a study of ten institutions in the Public Flagships Network (PFN). Over the course of the 2013/2014 academic year, Ithaka S+R interviewed 214 individuals, ranging from presidents and provosts to key administrative officers and staff, to department chairs and faculty. Members of…
Issue Brief
November 13, 2014
Information Literacy and Research Practices
On November 12, 2014, ACRL released the third draft of the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education and called upon the community to provide additional feedback. Against this backdrop, this issue brief is particularly timely. In "Information Literacy and Research Practices," Nancy Fried Foster, Ithaka S+R's senior anthropologist, demonstrates how "researchers in the wild" are adhering to many of the goals described in the draft Framework. While recognizing that the move away from the Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education, in…
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Issue Brief
October 13, 2014
Technology: Its Potential Impact on the National Need to Improve Educational Outcomes and Control Costs
On Monday, October 13, 2014, William G. Bowen delivered the opening address at Rice University's De Lange Conference, "Technology: Its Potential Impact On The National Need To Improve Educational Outcomes And Control Costs." We are pleased to publish it here as an Ithaka S+R issue brief. Bowen, who is president emeritus of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and also president emeritus of Princeton University, was the founding chairman of JSTOR/ITHAKA and continues to serve on ITHAKA's board. The paper explores…
Issue Brief
September 24, 2014
Does Discovery Still Happen in the Library?
Roles and Strategies for a Shifting Reality
In the age of the ubiquitous single search box, what role do libraries play in the discovery of scholarly resources? In this Issue Brief, Roger Schonfeld explores how the vision that the library should be the starting point for research—a vision many library directors hold—is often in conflict with the practices of faculty and students. As users migrate to other starting points, librarians could invest in ways to bring them back. But there is also an opportunity for librarians to re-think…
Issue Brief
August 27, 2014
Faster and Cheaper
Can a Digital-Centric Workflow Transform the Book Review?
Academic authors in the humanities and social sciences often wait three or more years to see the first reviews of their scholarly monographs. Why does it take so long? As Oona Schmid, director of publishing at the American Anthropological Association (AAA), describes in this issue brief, it is because book reviewing still relies on a print-centric system. Thanks to funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the AAA is now developing a prototype to completely re-imagine the book review process to…
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Research Report
July 10, 2014
Interactive Online Learning on Campus
Testing MOOCs and Other Platforms in Hybrid Formats in the University System of Maryland
Online technologies show promise for educating more people in innovative ways that can lower costs for universities and colleges, but how can higher education leaders move forward, confident in their choices about how best to integrate these technologies on their campuses? With a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Ithaka S+R is working to help provide the answer. Since November 2012, Ithaka S+R has been working with the University System of Maryland (USM) to test a variety of…
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.…
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Research Report
June 18, 2014
Sustaining the Digital Humanities
Host Institution Support Beyond the Start-up Phase
As more and more scholars experiment with building digital humanities (DH) resources, how are their host institutions approaching the challenge of supporting these diverse projects over time? In this study, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, Ithaka S+R explored the different models colleges and universities have adopted to support DH outputs on their campuses. This final report, Sustaining the Digital Humanities: Host-Institution Support beyond the Start-Up Phase, and the accompanying Sustainability Implementation Toolkit, are intended to guide faculty,…
Issue Brief
May 28, 2014
Driving With Data
A Roadmap for Evidence-Based Decision Making in Academic Libraries
COUNTER-compliant usage statistics, service assessments, peer benchmarking—librarians have been gathering different types of data for some time, using data to measure the usage of their resources, the quality of their services, and how they stack up against similar institutions. But could library leaders collect data differently? In this Issue Brief Deanna Marcum and Roger Schonfeld suggest an approach where library leaders start not with the data that are easy to gather, but with the problems they are trying to solve. What does…
Research Report
April 30, 2014
Supporting the Changing Research Practices of Art Historians
This study, funded by the Getty Foundation and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, looks at how art historians' research practices are evolving in the digital age. Intended primarily for the museums, libraries, academic departments, and visual resources centers that support research in art history within the U.S., this project focused on five key areas: 1. The emergence of "digital art history," and how it is diverging from the broader understanding of the digital humanities. 2. The interconnected scholarly communities that…
Issue Brief
April 14, 2014
Technology to the Rescue
Can Technology-Enhanced Education Help Public Flagship Universities Meet Their Challenges?
How might public flagships meet some of their most pressing challenges? Earlier this month, Ithaka S+R completed a study on behalf of Lumina Foundation to understand the growing but contested role of technology-enhanced education at these universities. In this issue brief, Deanna Marcum, Ithaka S+R's Managing Director, offers an abbreviated look at the study's findings on how public flagships are addressing the need to increase access to education, contain costs, improve student learning outcomes, and increase institutional efficiency.
Research Report
March 27, 2014
A Guide to the Best Revenue Models and Funding Sources for your Digital Resources
There are fewer barriers than ever before for those who wish to build something on the web, whether an online journal, a website with tools for teaching, or a digitized collection of rare and unique materials. Yet, no matter who creates these resources or how they were initially funded, there are substantial costs involved in keeping digital resources up and running for the long term while continuing to deliver value to those who use them. With the support of the…