Topic: Educational Transformation
Blog Post
February 2, 2016
To Measure or Not to Measure: Which Student Outcomes Should Make the Cut?
Few would question whether colleges and universities should have administrative systems in place for measuring learning and course outcomes for all students, in ways that can be quantified and used to help institutions meet their goals. But not all outcomes are created equal, and deciding which outcomes schools should systematically measure for all students can be difficult and controversial. When thinking about colleges engaging in systematic quantitative measurement of student outcomes, three core questions come to mind: (1) Is promoting…
Blog Post
January 28, 2016
Artstor-ITHAKA Community Letter
To our creators, partners and users Artstor and ITHAKA Join Forces We are writing to you as a valued member of our community to share the good news that Artstor, the nonprofit provider of the Artstor Digital Library of images and the Shared Shelf platform for cataloguing and digital asset management, will now operate under the umbrella of its fellow nonprofit ITHAKA, the organization that currently operates three other services: JSTOR, Portico and Ithaka S+R. As you may know, Artstor,…
Blog Post
January 26, 2016
(Re)introducing the Educational Transformation Team
The new year brings a new member—our fifth—to Ithaka S+R’s Educational Transformation team. It seems like a good opportunity to (re)introduce our program’s staff, which includes three new members since July 2015. In addition to me, the director of the program, we have two senior researchers and two analysts. Our team brings together a diverse and complementary set of skills and backgrounds, enabling us to take on a range of project work focused on research, policy, and practice…
Blog Post
January 26, 2016
Redesigning Organizations and Spaces
In the summer of 2014, Yale University integrated eight separate units into a unified Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) that advises teachers, tutors students, leverages technology for teaching and learning, and fosters global teaching and learning partnerships. First an idea, then a plan on paper, and finally a new unit by administrative action, the new CTL became more of a reality when five of the eight constituent units moved into a temporary shared space in the summer of…
Blog Post
January 21, 2016
Love and Measurement: Online Learning in Small, Independent Colleges
Dr. Robert Wachter, professor and interim chairman of the department of medicine, University of California, San Francisco, wrote an opinion piece for The New York Times on January 17 in which he argues that measurement in both the health care and education industries has failed us. He concludes by saying, “The secret of quality is love.” He worried that our efforts to measure and improve quality somehow block the altruism that motivates both doctors and teachers to do their…
Blog Post
January 6, 2016
Mismatch Theory and the Missing Role of the Institution
At this point, any frequent consumer of higher education news is well aware of the controversial remarks Justice Antonin Scalia made during oral arguments in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin. Many are also likely familiar with the subsequent debates about affirmative action and “mismatched students” that these remarks provoked. In speculating whether black students preferentially admitted to UT Austin might be better off attending “a slower-track school where they do well,” Justice Scalia prompted numerous articles,…
Blog Post
January 4, 2016
Moving Innovation Off Campus
When Paul LeBlanc arrived at Southern New Hampshire University in 2003, he realized that the small, private, tuition-dependent college on the banks of the Merrimack River was destined to decline right along with the downward projections for high school graduates in the state. “I studied the cards we were dealt and looked for the best ones,” he said. In one corner of campus, he found his ace in the hole: a small online operation. Over the next several years, by…
Blog Post
December 21, 2015
2015: A Retrospective
The end of 2015 is upon us, and it seems a good time to look back on what we have done well and to identify areas in which we can do better in the new year. The good news—this has been a stellar year for Ithaka S+R publications. In the two program areas—Educational Transformation and Libraries and Scholarly Communication—we have issued 21 research reports, case studies and issue briefs. The Educational Transformation program has focused on case…
Blog Post
December 14, 2015
A Low-Cost Solution to Math Problems?
Summer bridge programs are a popular approach to helping students close gaps before they start their first year of college. These intensive, four to five week interventions aim to address multiple areas of academic need. Research suggests that summer bridge programs can help students start college on stronger footing, at least in the short term, although benefits fade by the end of two years without additional support. Because of their financial and time costs, summer programs are not a practical…
Research Report
December 14, 2015
Can Online Learning Improve College Math Readiness?
Randomized Trials Using Pearson’s MyFoundationsLab in Summer Bridge Programs
Far too many students in the United States start their postsecondary education without being able to demonstrate the skills and knowledge deemed necessary to succeed in college-level math. Colleges and universities have traditionally dealt with this problem by placing students in full-semester developmental courses for which they must pay full tuition but do not receive college credit. It has become clear, however, that this approach has serious drawbacks, as students who start out in remediation are far less likely to…
Blog Post
December 9, 2015
Parenting as a College Outcome
Amidst the flurry of a vital and long-overdue national conversation surrounding college completion, affordability and debt, and post-graduate employment, it is easy to conceive of the outcomes and value of higher education as mostly economic. Do students learn skills and earn credentials that lead to fruitful labor force participation and economic self-sufficiency? However, as change and innovation sweep across higher education, it is important to keep in mind the broader range of valuable outcomes and goals we hold and ensure…
Blog Post
December 3, 2015
Idaho’s Bold Initiative
Will It Help?
Earlier this week, Inside Higher Ed reported on the recent announcement by the state of Idaho that, beginning with the class of 2016, the state’s high school graduates would be guaranteed admission into at least some, and possibly all, of Idaho’s eight public colleges and universities. For more than 20,000 public high school graduates, admission into five of the state’s postsecondary schools would be guaranteed while the remaining three – Boise State University, Idaho State University, and University of…
Blog Post
December 2, 2015
A Glimpse of the Future at ITHAKA’s Next Wave Conference
Last month ITHAKA hosted The Next Wave conference. We brought together people from both inside and outside the academy to discuss issues important to the future of education. Our broad theme was data, value, and privacy. As is always the case with ITHAKA meetings, we spent as much time projecting technology’s impact on the future as we did reflecting on how it is affecting us today. In this post I will share a few of the highlights and thought-provoking…
Blog Post
November 16, 2015
Having the “Online Learning Discussion” with Faculty
Ithaka S+R has been working with the Council of Independent Colleges for nearly two years in creating a consortium for online learning in the humanities. We have written extensively about the project, in a previous blog post, a report on the findings after the first year of the program, and a case study in which we featured a few faculty from the project and their experiences with the program. Last week, the Council of Independent Colleges held…
Blog Post
November 12, 2015
Is Changing the Application Process Enough to Improve Access to Selective Colleges?
No, But It’s a Start
Last month, a consortium of 83 selective public and private universities unveiled a plan to build a new college application system. The Coalition for Access, Affordability, and Success plans to develop a “free platform of online tools to streamline the experience of applying to college.” The most notable part of this platform would be its “virtual locker,” a portfolio in which students could store different types of content—from creative work, to class projects, to teacher recommendations—beginning in ninth…
Blog Post
November 4, 2015
A New Frontier for Online Learning
Upper Level Humanities Courses at Small Colleges
As students and their families have become increasingly value-conscious, and competition has heated up, the presidents of small, independent colleges have had to find ways to reduce costs, increase enrollments, or both. These pressures have often meant curricular changes. The humanities have been hit hard by these trends. As the number of humanities majors has declined, small colleges have struggled to maintain a robust humanities course catalog—and, in particular, a set of needed upper-level courses—for the majors that remain. The…
Case Study
November 4, 2015
Leveraging Technology for the Liberal Arts
The Council of Independent Colleges Consortium for Online Humanities Instruction
The Council of Independent Colleges (CIC), created in 1956, is a membership organization of nearly 700 independent, non-profit colleges and universities. The organization exists to support college and university leadership, advance institutional excellence, and enhance public understanding of private higher education’s contributions to society. To achieve these goals, CIC hosts and develops programs, seminars, and conferences that help institutions improve the quality of education, administrative and financial performance, and institutional visibility. Economic pressures have forced presidents of independent colleges to…
Blog Post
October 29, 2015
Valencia College’s Collaborative Re-design
“Culture” is often treated as a mystery ingredient in the recipe for promoting student success. A good culture catalyzes well-designed interventions and produces positives results. A bad culture impedes the take-up or spread of practices that should otherwise work, leading to disappointment. But like airborne yeast in a sourdough, an institution either has good culture or it doesn’t. But what if culture weren’t a background condition? What if, instead, it can be designed, intentionally? And if so, how? Valencia College,…
Case Study
October 29, 2015
Collaborating for Student Success at Valencia College
In recent years, a promising conversation about change at community colleges has emerged. Employing the language of redesign and reinvention, this conversation emphasizes comprehensive, broad-sweeping reform, and calls for a reorientation of community college missions around student learning and student success. Though it is hard to disagree that improving student outcomes is desirable, the traditional enrollment and funding models for community colleges make a true institutional “reset” difficult. Understanding how institutions have successfully gone about redesigning their operations and culture…
Blog Post
October 28, 2015
Is Self-Exploration in College an Outdated Concept?
Time and again, the concept of “self-exploration” as a crucial component of the college experience makes its way into discussions about restructuring undergraduate degree programs in the US. Proponents of such self-exploration argue that focused career-training programs and guided pathways programs are too regimented and narrow, denying students the precious gift of self-exploration and discovery that results from exposure to a vast array of courses of their choosing. Recent innovations in higher education may also limit certain exploratory experiences for…