Topic: Educational Transformation
Blog Post
October 28, 2013
MOOCs in the Classroom?
Rebecca Griffiths explores an intriguing and potentially high impact application of online learning: MOOCs in the Classroom? What happens when faculty are encouraged to adapt MOOCs intended for large global audiences for use in traditional classroom settings and curriculum? Can this “off label use” bring benefits like improved learning outcomes or the ability to educate more students in a given course? How can institutions make informed, evidence-based choices about the use of these technology enabled courses on their own campuses?…
Blog Post
November 20, 2012
Sustainable Scholarship Conference 2012
Videos Now Available
ITHAKA hosted our annual Sustainable Scholarship Conference in October, bringing together librarians, publishers, scholarly society leaders, and a variety of others interested in how higher education is changing as a result of new technologies. This year’s theme was “The Question of Quality: New Forms of Grading, Credentialing, and Peer Review in the Digital World.” Videos of the presentations are now available online. Here are some highlights: Keynote: Kevin Guthrie, president of ITHAKA, focused on some of the key…
Blog Post
October 12, 2012
The ‘Cost Disease’ in Higher Education
Is Technology the Answer?
This week William G. Bowen, ITHAKA trustee and Ithaka S+R senior advisor, delivered the Tanner Lectures on Human Values, hosted jointly by Stanford’s Center for Ethics in Society and The Office of the President at Stanford University. These lectures are now available as an ITHAKA publication, The ‘Cost Disease’ in Higher Education: Is Technology the Answer? Declining public support and steadily rising costs have caused tuition to rise faster than inflation (and family incomes) for many years. Concerns…
Blog Post
July 30, 2012
How Online Learning Could Unbundle the University
Kevin Guthrie’s column in the new edition of Educause Review summarizes a number of findings from the Ithaka S+R report “Barriers to Adoption of Online Learning Systems in U.S. Higher Education.” He writes, “Digital and network technologies are commoditizing some basic aspects of teaching while they are simultaneously unbundling various aspects of a faculty member’s role.” It strikes me that the underlying drivers here have important implications for institutions as well as for faculty. This “commoditizing” and…
Blog Post
June 11, 2012
Introducing Rebecca Griffiths
I’m thrilled to announce Rebecca Griffiths’s return to the S+R team, which she’ll be joining as program director for online learning. Rebecca was a founding member of Ithaka, initially helping to create Aluka, and then leading the launch of the Strategic Services practice (now part of Ithaka S+R). In addition to supporting business planning efforts for clients, she co-authored several of Ithaka’s influential papers on the sustainability of digital projects, uses of open source software in higher education, and…
Blog Post
May 22, 2012
Online Learning
A Zero Can Mean A Lot
Online learning is hardly a novel concept anymore. It’s hard to find a recent or current college student who hasn’t taken at least one course online. Whether or not they like the experience is another question—some seem to thrive on the flexibility and freedom of working at their own pace, others miss the face-to-face interaction with a live instructor. The real question is not whether online learning is here to stay—it almost certainly is—but whether it is making a fundamental…
Blog Post
May 14, 2012
Five Questions for Lawrence Bacow
Ithaka S+R’s recent report “Barriers to Adoption of Online Learning Systems in U.S. Higher Education” was the result of a months-long research process with input from many different colleges and universities. Our project team was led by Ithaka S+R senior advisor Dr. Lawrence Bacow, a respected educator and advocate for access to higher education, who retired from his post as president of Tufts University in 2011. After the publication of the report, I asked Dr. Bacow to reflect…
Research Report
April 3, 2006
The Visual Resources Environment at Liberal Arts Colleges
The increasing availability of digital images at colleges and universities has offered new opportunities for teaching and learning. In some disciplines and on some campuses, the opportunities are nothing short of transformative. In other cases, however, digital images have had only a modest impact. What are some of the factors associated with the more successful and transformative opportunities that digital images afford? For this study, we visited seven liberal arts college campuses and spoke with a variety of faculty members,…