Topic: Student learning and outcomes
Blog Post
December 13, 2022
Building a Thriving Student Support Ecosystem
An Action Plan for Community Colleges
Community colleges have developed a variety of services to support their students’ success, but too often these offerings are siloed in different campus units, minimizing their impact. Over the past four years, Ithaka S+R has conducted IMLS-funded research to surface the most effective collaborative strategies to break down those siloes. This action plan summarizes best practices for faculty, librarians, administrators, and others as they implement these services.
Blog Post
November 30, 2022
Supporting Mobile Students to Credential Completion through Holistic Credit Mobility
People learn in more places than ever before—earning credits from high school or dual enrollment courses, picking up certifications for job advancement, gaining experience through the military, and more. While many colleges, universities, and employers have begun translating this accumulated learning into transcriptable credits, students frequently find that institutions will not count their previously accumulated credits.
Issue Brief
November 16, 2022
Holistic Credit Mobility
Centering Learning in Credential Completion
In this issue brief, we introduce holistic credit mobility as a framework for making sense of contemporary student mobility and devising solutions that center the success of mobile students with multiple forms and sources of validated learning. In the sections that follow, we define holistic credit mobility and highlight strategies to support its effective deployment throughout postsecondary institutions and systems.
Blog Post
October 31, 2022
Joining Hands to Improve Student Access to College
Successfully addressing student debt, transcript holds, and re-enrollment for adult learners often requires cross-organizational partnerships. The Ohio College Comeback Compact is doing exactly that in northeast Ohio. A regional collaborative of eight public colleges and universities, the Ohio Department of Higher Education, Ithaka S+R, and College Now Greater Cleveland, the Ohio Compact is an innovative program allowing students to return to one of the participating institutions despite owing institutional debt that likely resulted in a transcript hold.
Blog Post
September 27, 2022
Supporting Quantitative Learning in the Social Sciences
New Report Details Challenges and Opportunities
Social science classes play important roles in teaching quantitative literacy to students because they ground quantitative reasoning in contexts that resonate with undergraduates. Understanding how social science instructors teach quantitative skills and identifying instructional barriers can help libraries and other university units support faculty and students. Today, Ithaka S+R releases findings from one of the largest in-depth studies of teaching practices across social science disciplines, conducted in partnership with librarians from 20 colleges and universities in the United States.
Research Report
September 27, 2022
Fostering Data Literacy
Teaching with Quantitative Data in the Social Sciences
“Fostering Data Literacy: Teaching with Quantitative Data in the Social Sciences” explores why and how instructors teach with data, identifies the most important challenges they face, and describes how faculty and students utilize relevant campus and external resources. Full details and actionable recommendations for stakeholders are offered in the body of the report, which offers guidance to university libraries and other campus units, faculty, vendors, and others interested in improving institutional capacities to support data-intensive instruction in the social sciences.
Past Event
October 18, 2022
Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due: An Exploration of Articulation of Credit Transfer (ACT)
Grantmakers for Education Annual Conference
Martin Kurzweil and Lexa Logue will participate in a panel with the Hecksher Foundation's Peter Sloan and the Carroll and Milton Petrie Foundation's Miss. Cass Conrad focusing on new ways the Articulation of Credit Transfer project is helping students gain their credentials. The panel will discuss a transparent, public facing resource developed within The City University of New York system. The panel is scheduled to take place on October 18 at 1:45 - 3:00 pm CT. …
Blog Post
September 7, 2022
Comments on the Department of Education’s Proposed Regulations for Pell Grant Restoration for Incarcerated People
Effective July 1, 2023, incarcerated people will once again be eligible to receive Pell grants to support their education, ending a 29 year ban. Below we publish Ithaka S+R’s letter to the Department of Education, outlining our concerns and providing recommendations that would help ensure that people who are incarcerated in the United States are provided the opportunity to participate in and benefit from a quality education.
Past Event
September 8, 2022
The State of Affordability in Higher Ed: State Aid’s Role in Student Success
Come To Believe Network Panel
On Thursday, September 8 at 1-2 pm ET, Ithaka S+R Senior Researcher Sarah Pingel will participate in a panel discussion on the importance of state grant aid in higher education, hosted by the Come To Believe Network. The event will feature a research presentation on the impact of grant aid by Brent Evans and will a discussion with state aid providers in Illinois and Minnesota, as well as national stakeholders, including Jacqueline Moreno, Meghan Flores, and Frank Ballman. Register for…
Blog Post
August 23, 2022
Technology Access in Higher Education in Prison Programs
New Survey Launch
We are excited to announce the launch of a new survey on the landscape of technology access in higher education in prison programs. This survey is a part of Ithaka S+R’s larger work on access to information for incarcerated students and the role of media review in higher education in prisons. While early research on the expansion of educational opportunities in prisons is positive, existing research suggests that educational and skills-based inequities hinder system impacted learners.
Blog Post
August 18, 2022
Diversity, Equity, and the PhD Pipeline
Expanding the Toolkit
The growing mismatch between the profiles of current full-time faculty, 75 percent of whom are white, and the nation’s increasingly diverse undergraduate student bodies, 45 percent of whom are people of color, represents a serious threat to socioeconomic and racial equity and intergenerational mobility. In spite of a generation of comprehensive targeted enrichment interventions from the undergraduate through postdoctoral fellowship stages, public and privately-funded efforts to increase the number of PhDs from historically underserved populations has been painstakingly slow.
Blog Post
August 15, 2022
Stranded Credits: State-Level Actions and Opportunities
Over the past several years, state and federal regulators have increasingly scrutinized the practice of transcript withholding. As of June 15, 2022, five states have pending bills and eight states have enacted bills that prohibit postsecondary institutions from withholding transcripts. Without transcript holds, students will be able to re-enroll in college, transfer to an institution that better fits their needs, apply for jobs that require postsecondary degrees, and potentially be in a better position to pay off their educational debt.
Blog Post
August 2, 2022
New Opportunity for Stopped-Out College Students in Northeast Ohio to Settle Debt and Access Stranded Credits
Ohio College Comeback Compact Launches Summer 2022
Thousands of college students in Northeast Ohio who left school without a degree and owe money to their former college now have a pathway back to settle the debt and continue their education. Beginning this month, the Ohio College Comeback Compact is contacting approximately 15,000 students with a new proposition: come back to any public college in the region, even if you owe money and your transcript is being held because of it. Eligible students who…
Blog Post
July 26, 2022
An Interview on QuadEx, Duke University’s New Equity-based Residential and Learning Model
Dr. Jenny Wood Crowley and Chris Rossi on Driving Campus Change
As part of our Academic Equity Interview Blog series (see linked our previous posts on campus climate and mental health), we explore how Duke University, a member of the American Talent Initiative’s (ATI) Academic Equity Community of Practice, is driving campus change through their inclusive living and learning model, QuadEx. QuadEx…
Blog Post
July 12, 2022
The Show Goes On: Growing an Ecosystem Devoted to Academic Equity
2022 Academic Equity Summer Institute
in 2019, 18 colleges and universities from across the country came together at Georgetown University for the inaugural Summer Institute on Equity in the Academic Experience, devoted to surfacing strategies and programs to help ensure the success of students from underrepresented backgrounds. Three years later, the number of participating colleges has nearly tripled (50), with over 400 institutional representatives joining the 2022 Summer Institute on Equity in the Academic Experience last month to advance this mission.
Issue Brief
July 7, 2022
Lost and Found: State and Institutional Actions to Resolve Stranded Credits
This brief provides a roadmap for stakeholders interested in the underlying practices that create stranded credits and what can be done to improve them. To begin, we provide specific definitions of the terms and practices implicated in the creation of stranded credits. While researchers and policy leaders have increased their attention on the problem of stranded credits, this brief lays out in detail how they are created, why they matter, and what can be done to better balance the interests.
Past Event
June 14, 2022
Webinar: Solving Stranded Credits and Institutional Debt
The Washington Student Achievement Council
On Tuesday, June 14, from 1:00 – 2:00 PDT, Martin Kurzweil will present on “Solving Standard Credits and Institutional Debt” during a webinar for the Washington Student Achievement Council. To register, visit the Council’s website. About the webinar Recent research by Ithaka S+R and others has revealed that more than 6.6 million students nationally owe debt on an unpaid balance to a previously attended college or university, with an average balance of $2,400. The vast majority of institutions withhold…
Blog Post
June 14, 2022
Looking Forward to ALA Annual 2022
A Banner Year for Librarians Serving Incarcerated Patrons
The American Library Association (ALA) will be holding its annual conference next week (June 23-28) in Washington DC, in person for the first time since 2019. The conference theme, “together again,” points to the critical importance of building and sustaining community, and I am especially excited to see that the conference schedule has multiple sessions that will provide opportunities for librarians who serve incarcerated people to connect and learn. Even in an increasingly censorius national…
Blog Post
June 9, 2022
Academic Libraries’ Streaming Media Trends in the US and Canada
New Survey Results Available
Libraries are the major purchasers of streaming media for their universities, and they face numerous challenges meeting the growing demand for these resources from students and instructors. Understanding how libraries are currently responding to these challenges and planning for future acquisitions of streaming media are important for both university decision makers and vendors hoping to serve this market. Today Ithaka S+R releases the findings from the most comprehensive survey to date of academic…
Blog Post
June 6, 2022
Announcing a New Partnership with the Kessler Scholars Collaborative
First-generation students face unique challenges upon entering college. Compared to their peers whose families have a history of college attendance, these students are more likely to have additional responsibilities outside of the classroom, receive less financial support, and struggle more frequently with their sense of belonging at their institutions. As the first of their families to attend college, many first-generation students often navigate…