Topic: Student learning and outcomes
Blog Post
November 13, 2017
How Policymakers Can Help Institutions Support Financially Insecure Students
Editor’s note: We asked Rachel Dykstra Boon, a panelist for our Higher Ed Insights Survey, to contribute this blog post based on her open-ended comments on the 2017 survey. Ask any teacher (pre-school through graduate school) for an example of a student with food, housing or financial struggles affecting the learning experience and heart-breaking stories will follow. Quantitative and qualitative research over the past several years has pointed to the growth in this demographic of college students as the country…
Blog Post
November 10, 2017
For-Profit Colleges – What Went Wrong?
Mention the phrase “for-profit college” and I can’t help but immediately picture a single parent working two jobs while attending college at night, after the kids are asleep, saddled with debt and no prospects for improving their employment conditions or earnings despite their best efforts. Vivid in my mind are the painful stories of young low-income mothers I interviewed during my graduate studies, whose economic, family, and personal decisions (and opportunities) were often dictated by their (relatively exorbitant) loan repayments…
Blog Post
November 6, 2017
The Tax Status of Colleges: Who Cares?
Across several survey items, the respondents to Ithaka S+R’s Higher Ed Insights Spring 2017 Survey rated Obama administration policies and enforcement actions against for-profit institutions as having a high and positive impact. In my view, policies such as the gainful employment rule and actions such as revoking the accreditation authority of the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools (ACICS) for revoking Title IV eligibility for students attending ITT Tech were understandable, on the whole, but had serious shortcomings.
Blog Post
October 31, 2017
In New Survey, Higher Ed Insiders Share Concerns about Impact of Federal Policy Changes under President Trump
In May and June of 2017, we surveyed the Ithaka S+R Higher Ed Insights panel—164 senior leaders and experts at colleges and universities, associations, research groups, and philanthropies—about the state of higher education and the likely impact of recent events and trends. (You can learn more about our Higher Ed Insights Project here.) Today, in “Higher Ed Insights: Results of the Spring 2017 Survey,” Rayane Alamuddin, Daniel Rossman, and I report the findings of that survey. While respondents…
Research Report
October 31, 2017
Higher Ed Insights: Results of the Spring 2017 Survey
In May and June of 2017, we surveyed the Ithaka S+R Higher Ed Insights panel—164 senior leaders and experts at colleges and universities, associations, research groups, and philanthropies—about the state of higher education and the likely impact of recent events and trends. While respondents were generally positive about the state of undergraduate education in the United States, they expressed urgency about the need to improve degree completion rates, the quality of student learning, and affordability for students. Respondents’ reactions to…
Blog Post
October 24, 2017
New Graduation Data on Pell Recipients Reveals a Gap in Outcomes
In 2015-16, the federal government disbursed more than $28 billion under the Pell Grant program to 7.6 million students, representing almost 40 percent of undergraduates in the United States. Because eligibility for the grant depends largely on financial need, many researchers use it as a proxy for income, although there are limitations. Despite the size and scope of the program and its importance in socioeconomic and higher education research, outcomes of Pell recipients have not been readily available.
Blog Post
October 19, 2017
The American Talent Initiative’s Fall 2017 Strategic Support Meeting
Convening Member Institutions for Collaborative Practice-Sharing
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…
Blog Post
October 11, 2017
Leveraging Qualitative Research in the User-Centered Library
Boldly proclaiming that “the Library’s starting point will be from the perspective of users and audiences,” Trinity College Dublin Library’s strategic plan focuses on fostering user-centered approaches to service. The plan recognizes that an evidence-based approach to understanding patrons’ needs through research is essential to effective service innovation. The library is also committed to promoting a user-centered library culture throughout the library. In support of these strategic goals, I recently delivered a workshop on qualitative research methods for those…
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…