Topic: Cross-institutional collaboration
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…
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…
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…
Blog Post
May 14, 2020
Launching Two Projects on Supporting Data Work
Last summer we announced that we were going to begin two new collaborative projects on data, one focused on teaching, and one on research. While we couldn’t have anticipated then the conditions we are facing now, we believe the research is more important than ever. The first project will examine instructors’ support needs teaching with data in the social sciences, while the second project will study the support needs of researchers who work…
Blog Post
May 6, 2020
Shared Heritage, Shared Responsibility
African Memory Institutions and the Response to COVID-19
The implications and consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic can vary greatly depending on demographic, political, social, cultural and economic factors. Therefore the regional documentation initiatives–now being undertaken by cultural heritage institutions throughout the world–are essential to capturing local circumstances and experiences. This work is vital to help future generations understand the extent of the pandemic and its vast impact. To this end, and in collaboration with several international preservation advocacy organizations, UNESCO recently made a public…
Blog Post
April 21, 2020
Research Library Digitization Has Found Its Moment
Long-term Investments Pay Off and Provide Lessons for the Future
Academic libraries have been on the leading edge of universities’ digital transformation for two decades. As a result, they were prepared for this moment of crisis. The broader lesson here, not just for libraries but for the entire higher education sector, is to continue investing “just in case” in enabling capacities—rather than, in this time of looming cutbacks, budgeting narrowly for today’s immediate needs only. Recent weeks have seen the collapse of…
Blog Post
April 10, 2020
Planning for the Recovery: Advice from a Former College President
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…
Blog Post
March 13, 2020
Getting Online: Lessons from Liberal Arts Colleges
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…
Blog Post
February 19, 2020
American Talent Initiative on Track to Goal of 50,000 More Lower-Income Students by 2025
Comprehensive strategies at standout ATI schools point the way
The American Talent Initiative issued this press release today. Media Contacts: Keeley Smith, GMMB (keeley.smith@gmmb.com, 253.651.8416); Linda Perlstein (linda.perlstein@aspeninstitute.org, 202-339-7490) A national alliance of leading colleges and universities is on track to enroll 50,000 more students who receive federal Pell grants by 2025, a new report shows. The findings underscore the importance of the American Talent Initiative’s (ATI) collaborative push to expand opportunity for low- and moderate-income students across the country. Between 2015-16, the year before ATI launched, and…
Research Report
February 19, 2020
Expanding Opportunity for Lower-Income Students
Three Years of the American Talent Initiative
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,…
Blog Post
February 3, 2020
The Primacy of Print Is Past
OhioLINK recently shared its vision for the library system of the future in a white paper. That vision, developed by a group of library deans and directors whose work was facilitated by Ithaka S+R, involves two key elements that have garnered some attention for what they say about the future of the library and the work performed within it. The first element is centering the library system—just like the library itself—around the user. And the second involves enabling the…
Blog Post
January 23, 2020
A Vision for a New Library System
An Issue Brief from OhioLINK and Ithaka S+R
Library systems should be strategic enablers. Yet too often they serve as strategic impediments. Today, I am proud to share with you OhioLINK’s vision for the library systems that would unlock the strategic potential of its members. Over the past year, colleagues and I have been collaborating with a working group of OhioLINK members as they developed their vision for a library system that could truly support the strategic directions their libraries are taking. This week,…
Issue Brief
January 23, 2020
It’s Not What Libraries Hold; It’s Who Libraries Serve
Seeking a User-Centered Future for Academic Libraries
In 2018, OhioLINK engaged its membership to envision a constellation of platforms and applications that would take the next step beyond “next-generation” commercial integrated library systems (ILS). This paper is the result of that process. The business of higher education, as it relates to libraries, is amid continued and drastic change. Managing collections is now but one aspect of library management. Libraries support teaching, affordable learning, and innovative research. They are managing services and products, online and off, amid expanding…
Blog Post
January 22, 2020
Copyright Education for Cultural Institutions
A 21st Century Approach for Libraries, Archives, and Museums
Today, Ithaka S+R is co-publishing, with Columbia University Libraries, a summary report about a roundtable held over the summer about Copyright Education in Libraries, Archives, and Museums. This is the latest step by a group of copyright experts and educators towards strengthening and sustaining copyright education for memory institutions and the research and educational missions they serve. Ithaka S+R’s, in close partnership with Columbia’s Rina Elster Pantalony and Lyrasis’s Tom Clareson,…
Issue Brief
January 22, 2020
Copyright Education in Libraries, Archives, and Museums: A 21st Century Approach
A Summary Report of Roundtable Discussions at Columbia University
On July 11-12th, 2019, with the generous financial support of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and together with project partners Ithaka S+R and LYRASIS, Copyright Advisory Services at Columbia University Libraries held roundtable discussions as a second phase of research to determine how to structure and implement a professional development copyright education initiative for cultural heritage professionals working in libraries, archives, and museums. In particular, the purpose of these discussions was to examine whether there might be a way to…
Past Event
March 3, 2020
Shaping Up Services: Developing Prototypes for Student Success
Melissa Blankstein at the Educause ELI Annual Meeting
On Tuesday, March 3, Melissa Blankstein is presenting a poster on “Shaping Up Services: Developing Prototypes for Student Success,” at the Educause ELI Annual Meeting in Bellevue, Washington. For more information and to register, please visit the conference website. About the poster What methodologies can higher education institutions employ to develop new services that promote student success? This poster will share a data-driven approach recently implemented across a cohort of colleges: concept testing. Through concept testing, service providers can…
Past Event
January 10, 2020
Rebecca Springer at the Modern Language Association Annual Convention
On Friday, January 10, Rebecca Springer is taking part in a panel discussion on “What Is Humanities Research Now?” at the Modern Language Association Annual Convention in Seattle. She’ll be joined on the panel by Amanda L. Watson (New York U), John Tofanelli (Columbia U), Matthew Roberts (U of Illinois, Urbana), Ashley Champagne (Brown U), Darby Fanning (U of Utah), and Julie Frick Wade (MLA). The Modern Language Association’s Mary Onorato is moderating. For more information, please see the…
Blog Post
December 17, 2019
Reflecting on the Lessons from a Technology Implementation Study in Maryland
Interviews on the ALiS Project
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,…
Research Report
December 12, 2019
Teaching Business
Looking at the Support Needs of Instructors
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…
Blog Post
November 7, 2019
Adaptive Learning Technology + Active Learning Pedagogy in Introductory Statistics
New Reports on Results and Lessons from a Multi-Year, Multi-Campus Pilot in Maryland
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…