Topic: Educational Transformation
Past Event
January 27, 2020
Martin Kurzweil at the Non-Degree Credentials Research Network Meeting
On Monday, January 27, Martin Kurzweil be presenting at the Non-Degree Credentials Research Network Meeting at George Washington University in Washington DC. For more information, please see the NCRN website. …
Past Event
January 30, 2020
Catharine Bond Hill and Martin Kurzweil at the Mellon Research Forum Convening
Catharine Bond Hill and Martin Kurzweil will be participating the Mellon Research Forum Convening hosted by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in Irvine, California on January 30-31. They will be discussing their continuing research on the value of a liberal arts education. For more information on the forum, please see the Foundation website. …
Past Event
July 6, 2020
Catharine Bond Hill at Transforming Teaching and Learning
An Inside Higher Ed Event
Catharine Bond Hill is speaking at Inside Higher Ed’s Transforming Teaching and Learning event in Minneapolis from July 6-8. To learn more and to register, please see the conference website. About the event Higher education is easily–and unfairly–caricatured as having changed little for 200 years. Experimentation is abundant in college and university classrooms, physical and otherwise. But as pressure builds to ensure that more people develop the education and skills that employers (and society) need, colleges and their…
Blog Post
December 18, 2019
How Do Test-Optional or Test-Flexible Policies Affect Access and Opportunity?
A growing number of institutions have adopted or are considering test-optional or -flexible policies in recent years. Most recently, leaders of the University of California and several of its campuses have publicly discussed removing standardized test scores as an application requirement due to the perception that standardized tests are inherently biased against underserved students. Such a large system of selective institutions moving away from standardized tests would represent a dramatic shift in the higher education ecosystem. Although the number…
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,…
Blog Post
December 17, 2019
Three questions for Angela Sanchez
ECMC's Basic Needs Initiative
In November 2019, Ithaka S+R announced that we have been selected to participate in a new initiative led by ECMC Foundation focused on addressing the basic needs of college students. We asked Angela Sanchez, Program Officer, College Success, to tell us more about the Basic Needs Initiative (BNI). 1. What are the goals for ECMC Foundation’s three-year Basic Needs Initiative? The overarching goal of the BNI is that it will encourage the widespread adoption and advancement of…
Blog Post
December 12, 2019
An Interview with Dr. Alexandra W. Logue
Expanding Pathways to College Enrollment and Degree Attainment
Dr. Alexandra W. Logue is a Research Professor in CASE (the Center for Advanced Study in Education) of the Graduate Center of The City University of New York (CUNY), with particular responsibility for research and scholarship concerning college student success. Dr. Logue is a leading expert on remediation and transfer, and her most recent book, Pathways to Reform: Credits and Conflict at The City University of New York (Princeton University Press), is a case study regarding the difficulty of making…
Issue Brief
December 12, 2019
Expanding Pathways to College Enrollment and Degree Attainment
Policies and Reforms for a Diverse Population
For states to increase access to and attainment of higher education, they must implement policies and reforms that support learners who have not traditionally been well-served by higher education. By 2020, the United States is projected to have a shortage of five million workers with the adequate postsecondary education to fulfill workforce needs. States have a vested interest in and obligation to create multiple pathways to college enrollment and credential attainment that fit the needs of their diverse populations, not…
Blog Post
November 21, 2019
New Case Study: Bard High School Early College
There is immense value in a rigorous, broad-based, liberal arts education. Through rich discussion, application, and writing across a variety of disciplines, the liberal arts prepares students for their careers and readies them for lifelong learning and adapting to new circumstances, skills with increasing importance in the age of automation. Yet, access to the valuable liberal arts experience has historically been limited to relatively few students, most of them privileged. While many schools provide significant financial aid to defray costs,…
Case Study
November 21, 2019
Bard High School Early College
A Case Study
A rigorous liberal arts undergraduate experience has long been the benchmark for higher education in America. Broad-based, with areas of depth, and many opportunities for rich discussion, application, and writing, the liberal arts experience cultivates human potential, prepares students for the start of their career, and readies them for lifelong learning and for adapting to new circumstances. As automation extends throughout our economy, the human skills developed through the liberal arts will only become more important.
Past Event
January 27, 2020
Leading Change: Senior Leaders Examine What is Possible
Catharine Bond Hill Speaks at the Center for Enrollment Research, Policy and Practice Conference
On Monday, January 27, Catharine Bond Hill is speaking on “Leading Change: Senior Leaders Examine What is Possible” at the Center for Enrollment Research, Policy and Practice Conference in Los Angeles. She will be joined by Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education. The conference theme is “Reclaiming Public Trust in Admissions and Higher Education.” For more information and to register, please see the conference website.
Past Event
November 16, 2019
Danielle Cooper and Kurtis Tanaka at the National Conference on Higher Education in Prison
On Saturday, November 16, ITHAKA is hosting a breakfast session to share an update on “Providing Offline Access to High-Quality Library Resources in Prisons”at the 2019 National Conference on Higher Education in Prison in St. Louis, Missouri. With support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, in 2019 ITHAKA launched an initiative to help improve higher education in prison and reduce barriers for student research. In this session, Danielle Cooper and Kurtis Tanaka will provide an update on the project’s research…
Blog Post
November 11, 2019
Flipping the Script From Obligation to Opportunity
The American Talent Initiative’s Inaugural Veterans Community of Practice Convening
United States military veterans are underrepresented at high-graduation rate colleges and universities, with only one in ten veterans attending institutions that graduate at least 70 percent of their students. And yet, we know that veterans who do attend these colleges and universities thrive. In fact, student veterans are 1.4 times more likely to earn a certificate or degree than adult learners overall, and student veterans have an average GPA of 3.34, compared to the average for traditional…
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…
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…
Blog Post
October 30, 2019
Innovation in the Talent Pipeline Development Sector
FEATuring YOU: A Case Study
Ithaka S+R is excited to announce that we will be partnering with Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) to document how SNHU conceptualized, developed, and designed the Future Employment Assessment Tool (FEATuring YOU) to offer scalable, reliable, and engaging methods to assess soft skills and connect “opportunity youth”–young people between the ages of 16 and 24 who are neither enrolled in school nor participating in the labor market–to learning and employment…
Blog Post
October 29, 2019
Do Emergency Micro-Grants Help Financially-Disadvantaged Students Succeed?
Over the last 10 years, tuition and fees at degree-granting institutions have risen by 27 percent, making it more difficult for students, especially those already struggling to cover basic needs like housing and food, to afford to remain in college in the face of unexpected financial trouble. In many cases, unpaid term balances prevent students from continuing in the current term or enrolling in the following one, and as a result, students dropout or are automatically dropped. Unpaid balances…
Blog Post
October 22, 2019
Driving Liberal Arts Transfer Pathways
It’s Time for Independent Colleges to Target Community College Students
Every fall, an estimated 1.1 million American students begin their postsecondary education at community colleges. While most (80 percent) intend to earn their bachelor’s degree, less than a third transfer to a four-year institution and only 13 percent actually earn their bachelor’s degree in six years. Transfer practices between two- and four-year institutions are not adequately serving students. What’s more, scalable policies designed…
Past Event
October 8, 2019
James Dean Ward at the National Council for Workforce Education Conference
Meeting the Challenge of Achieving Educational Attainment Goals
On Tuesday, October 8, James Ward is presenting on “Meeting the Challenge of Achieving Educational Attainment Goals,” as part of a panel discussion at the National Council for Workforce Education Conference in San Antonio, Texas. For more information, please see the conference website. About the session Based on Anthony P. Carnevale’s research and educational attainment goals recommended by the Lumina Foundation, 42 states have established attainment goals. To achieve these goals, new policies and practices are required to recruit…
Blog Post
October 17, 2019
How to Develop a Successful Collaborative Network in and around Higher Education
New Playbook
At the same time that it is becoming more essential to individual mobility, economic vitality, and social cohesion, postsecondary education is becoming a more complex endeavor. In response, a growing set of leaders in higher education, workforce development, business, and government are turning to focused and deep collaborative efforts to drive change within their own organizations and across the ecosystems in which they operate. In a new Ithaka S+R publication, Unlocking the Power of Collaboration, Jenna Joo, Jeff Selingo,…