Topic: Cross-institutional collaboration

I would like to begin by acknowledging the Lenape, the traditional caretakers of the land on which Ithaka S+R is located. Today, Manhattan (from the Lenape word Manahatta) is still the home to many Indigenous peoples from across Turtle Island and beyond. I am grateful for the opportunity to work for Ithaka S+R on this land.[1] Here at Ithaka S+R, we have developed a certain kind of expertise in scholars’ information activities, both through our triennial U.S.

Earlier this month, more than 100 representatives from American Talent Initiative (ATI) member institutions and partner organizations convened in Washington, D.C. The meeting, run by The Aspen Institute and Ithaka S+R, was designed to give participants the opportunity to learn more about the progress of the initiative and to work collaboratively to advance practice in the key ATI focus areas (outreach, enrollment, financial aid, and retention/graduation). The initiative’s collective goal, adding an additional 50,000 low- and moderate-income students…

This Fall Ithaka S+R is launching a new project to explore the research support needs of Civil and Environmental Engineering scholars. Civil and Environmental Engineering focuses on the built and natural environment, including the design and maintenance of infrastructure and buildings and stewardship of natural resources. Our project seeks to develop a holistic understanding of these scholars’ information needs by attending to the full life cycle of their information activities, including information discovery, management and dissemination. Of particular interest are…

Over the past decade, collective impact initiatives have emerged in cities and communities all across the country. Collective impact refers to a cross-sector collaboration which brings together a broad spectrum of organizations to solve a specific social problem in a community. Collective impact efforts are typically geographically-bounded, to either a city, county, or region, and are different from traditional collaboration in that they are designed to drive sustainable change in entire systems. In addition to the organizations…

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…

Open educational resources (OERs), which are licensed as freely available for people to use and repurpose, have become a driving force as the education sector looks to reduce costs. OERs are associated with numerous benefits for students, including savings of an average of $128 per course, higher course grades, and greater likelihood of course completion. As a recent Ithaka S+R case study highlighted, the University of Maryland, University College (UMUC) implemented an OER program that saved students…

Institutions of higher education vary widely in how they define, collect, and store their students’ data, making the collection of student-level data across institutions a challenging task. Since September 2015, Ithaka S+R has served as the independent evaluator of the Monitoring Advising Analytics to Promote Success (MAAPS) study, an intensive proactive and technology-enhanced advisement intervention for first-time low-income and/or first-generation students across the 11 four-year public universities that make up the University Innovation Alliance. We recently completed the…

We are today in the midst of a profound reconfiguration of all sorts of information industries, impacting everything from journalism to entertainment. Libraries and scholarly information providers are not alone. Last week’s news of the bepress acquisition by Elsevier, which I first covered in a business analysis suggesting its strong strategic fit along with some potential risks, took the academic library community by storm. As the dust begins to settle, this is a…

Today Ithaka S+R releases its in-depth report on the research activities of agriculture scholars as part of its ongoing program to explore the research activities of scholars by discipline. For Supporting the Changing Research Practices of Agriculture Scholars, we explore the breadth of agriculture research activities in U.S. higher education towards fostering information services that will support those endeavors. As the report highlights, agriculture is a particularly compelling field because of its broad scope and wider societal relevance,…

In December 2016, Ithaka S+R, in collaboration with the Aspen Institute and with support from Bloomberg Philanthropies, launched the American Talent Initiative (ATI), a venture aimed at substantially expanding the number of talented low- and moderate-income students enrolling in and graduating from the colleges and universities with the highest graduation rates. Since its launch, ATI’s mission to increase access and opportunity has resonated with college leaders around the country, and in a few short months, we’ve rapidly expanded…

While academic libraries in the United States have actively collaborated with each other for more than 100 years, the digital turn has brought an explosion of interest in and pursuit of cross-institutional collaboration. These include large-scale digital access and preservation initiatives like HathiTrust, print preservation and access collaborations like Scholar’s Trust and WEST, metropolitan-level efforts ranging broadly from the Chicago Collections Alliance to MARLI, unmediated borrowing such as ConnectNY, and, of burgeoning strategic importance, the collaborations enabled through cloud-based library…

Each year nearly half of U.S. high school graduates who begin college are forced to take remedial math before they can take college courses for credit. For most, this remediation requirement is unexpected and a substantial barrier to earning a college degree. Only 22% of students who face math remediation are able to finish college. For minority, low-income, and first generation students—who now comprise the majority of college students in the U.S.—math remediation may be even more detrimental to their…

Today, we are publishing a report that grew out of a new type of collaboration facilitated by Ithaka S+R. As we continue to study the research practices of faculty in particular disciplines, we have developed a model that harnesses the knowledge and expertise of librarians on the ground. For Supporting the Changing Research Practices of Religious Studies Scholars, sponsored by the American Theological Library Association (ATLA) with additional support from the American Academy of Religion (AAR) and the Society…

Before being named CEO of LYRASIS, Robert Miller was the General Manager of Digital Libraries at the Internet Archive, where he oversaw the scanning of millions of books in both the United States and in a host of other countries. It is my opinion that librarianship was a contagious disease that infected him. He simply fell in love with the mission of libraries, so it was no surprise when I learned that Robert had been tapped to lead LYRASIS…

Since taking part in ITHAKA’s The Next Wave 2016 a few weeks ago, I have been reflecting on what I heard and what it means for the libraries and publishers we work with every day. As higher education changes to meet the needs of 21st century students, libraries and publishers must also adapt. Here are just a few of the big takeaways from my perspective. We need to align behind student success. The student is no longer the 18-22-year…

Thirty of the nation’s most respected colleges and universities today announced a new venture to substantially expand the number of talented low- and moderate-income students at America’s undergraduate institutions with the highest graduation rates. Coordinated by Ithaka S+R and the Aspen Institute’s College Excellence Program and supported by a grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies, the American Talent Initiative (ATI) brings together a diverse set of public and private institutions to ensure that talented young people from every zip code…

How should qualitative research be incorporated into a library’s research agenda? In the latest issue of Weave: Journal of Library Experience “provocateur anthropologists” Donna Lanclos and Andrew Asher reflect on the state of ethnographic research in libraries, which they characterize as more “ethnographish” than ethnographic. Some of the trappings of ethnographish library research include that the projects are: smaller scale, rely on “pre-packaged” methods, and aim towards solving institution-specific problems. In contrast, drawing on their experiences as…

Over the past decade, colleges and universities have faced increasing pressure to improve degree completion rates and demonstrate their value to students. At the same time, evidence has accumulated about efficacy of a number of structural and pedagogical changes institutions can make to help students succeed. Tactics including remedial course redesign, proactive advising and coaching, active learning pedagogies incorporating technology, and guided pathways now have a solid research base. Yet despite this great motivation and the availability of evidence-supported practices,…

Over the past two years, Ithaka S+R has had the opportunity to conduct several projects that study issues of equity, inclusion, and especially representative diversity, in the cultural and academic sectors. A recent piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education raised troubling questions about the diversity efforts at one major university, which it described as stuck in a “perpetual loop: Form a committee in reaction to a crisis, pledge to diversify the faculty,…

While a large majority of community college students aspire to a bachelor’s degree, only 14 percent will earn one within six years. But that deeply disappointing overall statistic hides a lot of variation: in some contexts, the pathway through two-year and four-year colleges to a bachelor’s degree is a much easier one. Often, the difference is not the students themselves or the resources, but how institutions work with students and one another, and the priorities to which resources are allocated.