Topic: Student learning and outcomes
Research Report
September 19, 2017
CIC Consortium for Online Humanities Instruction II
Evaluation Report for First Course Iteration
The CIC Consortium for Online Humanities Instruction began in 2014 with the support of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The success of the first Consortium motivated the Mellon Foundation to support a second Consortium that was formed in the summer of 2016 with teams of faculty members and administrators from 21 institutions that were selected through a competitive process.[1] Each institution is represented by a four-member team including a senior academic administrator, two full-time faculty members in the…
Blog Post
September 7, 2017
Community College Library Support for Student Success
Ithaka S+R and Northern Virginia Community College Launch New Research Project
Ithaka S+R regularly and extensively studies the perspectives, practices, and needs of faculty and students at four year colleges and universities to inform future roles for the academic library. Today, we are excited to announce that we will be expanding this work over the next 18 months to partner with seven community colleges in assessing and improving library support of student success within a community college context. We are grateful to the Institute of Museum and Library Services…
Blog Post
August 31, 2017
The Value of Collective Impact for Higher Education Institutions
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…
Blog Post
August 23, 2017
Innovation through Collaboration
Checking in on the CIC’s Consortium for Online Humanities Instruction
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…
Blog Post
August 17, 2017
Open Educational Resources
Sharing Lessons Learned from K-12 Education
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…
Blog Post
August 10, 2017
Lessons Learned in Collecting Student-Level Data from Multiple Higher Education Institutions
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…
Blog Post
August 8, 2017
University Libraries Are Putting the Student First
Perspective from US Library Leaders
Last week’s article in The Guardian from Alterline’s Ben Hickman, entitled “University libraries need to start putting the student first,” proposed that university libraries need to put evidence on student needs and practices at the heart of their decision-making. The author included a number of suggested areas for improvement – for example, the provision of ample space, friendly engagement with librarians and library staff, and accessible resources. As UK higher education transitions towards taking a more student-centric approach as…
Blog Post
August 8, 2017
Four Questions for Two Experts on the Future of Higher Education
Cappy Hill and Kevin Guthrie in the Chronicle of Higher Education
Recently ITHAKA president Kevin Guthrie and Ithaka S+R managing director Catharine Bond Hill sat down with the Chronicle of Higher Education’s Goldie Blumenstyk to discuss trends in higher education. Which innovations show the most promise and which are over-hyped? Join the conversation about adaptive learning technologies, data analytics, MOOCs, and OERs, and share your comments below.
Blog Post
July 31, 2017
Putting the Courseware-in-Context (CWiC) Framework into Practice
Challenges of Implementing New Educational Technology at Scale
Earlier this year, Ithaka S+R was awarded a $2.46 million, multi-year grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop, test, and scale new models of entry-level math instruction in higher education. Working closely with the project partners including TPSE Math (Transforming Post-Secondary Education in Mathematics), Acrobatiq, William E. Kirwan Center for Academic Innovation, the Urban Institute, as well as the two institutions that were part of a pre-pilot study during the 2016-17 academic…
Blog Post
July 19, 2017
Alternative Postsecondary Pathways
Millions of Americans receive postsecondary training through programs that don’t lead to an associate’s or bachelor’s degree. What do these programs offer? Who enrolls in them? How do the students who complete these programs fare? These are some of the questions Jessie Brown and I sought to answer when we embarked on a research project for the Commission on the Future of Undergraduate Education at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The resulting paper, “The Complex Universe…
Blog Post
July 17, 2017
Don’t File It Away: Creating Actionable Survey Results
You’ve developed a thoughtful questionnaire, gathered responses, generated meaningful, insightful findings, and now want to share these results to more widely inform decision-making. How do you ensure that these findings are communicated effectively to the right individuals? In spring 2016, Penn State University fielded the Ithaka S+R Undergraduate Student Survey and faced the challenging task of communicating findings from the survey, which covered perspectives from 2,000+ students using 37 libraries across 20 campuses. The Ithaka S+R local surveys, which…
Blog Post
July 6, 2017
Assessing the Information Practices, Needs, and Perceptions of Strategically Important Populations
Partnering to Develop the Ithaka S+R International Graduate/Professional Student Survey Module
While enrollment of international students has grown considerably in the last decade in the United States, investigations into their information practices and library needs are limited in number and are rarely conducted in a manner that enables comparative analysis of international and domestic graduate students. At the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (UIUC), international graduate students represent a significant portion of the total number of graduate students as well as of the total number of international students…
Blog Post
June 26, 2017
Advocacy and Assessment: Communicating and Maximizing Library Value
Earlier this year, Ithaka S+R published results from the US Library Survey 2016, which examines strategy and leadership issues from the perspective of academic library deans and directors. One of the key findings from the study was that library directors are pursuing strategic directions with a decreasing sense of support from their institutions, and a recent study on the perceptions of library value from the perspective of provosts…
Blog Post
June 8, 2017
How to Assure Quality in Higher Education?
Focus on Innovation, Minimum Standards, and Continuous Improvement
The U.S. quality assurance system—focused mainly on accreditation as a threshold for federal financial aid eligibility—has done a poor job of assuring quality. Barely 60 percent of first-time students complete a bachelor’s degree and 40 percent complete an associate’s degree at the institution where they started. These overall results mask a wide range of outcomes across institutions. As a result, many students, parents, and policymakers question the value of their massive investment in postsecondary education. Can the accreditation process be…
Research Report
June 8, 2017
Quality Assurance in U.S. Higher Education
The Current Landscape and Principles for Reform
The American higher education sector is diverse and creative. In 2014-15, the sector produced over 1 million associate’s degrees, nearly 1.9 million bachelor’s degrees, over 758,000 master’s degrees, and over 178,000 doctoral degrees.[1] The world leader in innovation for decades, the sector continues to produce cutting edge research and contributes mightily to the American economy. Recent estimates concluded that the United States spends a larger percentage of GDP on higher education than any other country.[2] But…
Blog Post
April 25, 2017
Growing the American Talent Initiative
Increasing Access and Opportunity for Lower-Income Students
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…
Research Report
April 3, 2017
US Library Survey 2016
The Ithaka S+R Library Survey 2016 examines strategy and leadership issues from the perspective of academic library deans and directors. This project aims to provide academic librarians and higher education leaders with information about chief librarians’ visions and the opportunities and challenges they face in leading their organizations. In fall 2016, we invited library deans and directors at not-for-profit four-year academic institutions across the United States to complete the survey, and we received 722 responses for a response rate of…
Blog Post
March 27, 2017
Improving math instruction is key to raising college graduation rates
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation awards Ithaka S+R multi-year grant to develop, test, and scale new models for entry-level math instruction
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…
Blog Post
March 13, 2017
Can an Investment in Instruction Improve a College’s Bottom Line?
Colleges and universities are under increasing pressure to simultaneously cut costs and improve student learning outcomes. There is a perceived tension between these goals: the conventional wisdom is that increasing instructional quality is not possible without increasing expenditures, but colleges and universities have limited resources to spend on improving instructional quality. But what if the relationship between institutional finances and instructional quality were more complex than that? In Instructional Quality, Student Outcomes, and Institutional Finances, a new white paper…
Blog Post
December 13, 2016
Lessons for Scholarly Communication from The Next Wave 2016
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…