This Ithaka S+R report is a landscape review of important developments in online learning today. It is the first in a series that will provide leaders in higher education with lessons learned from existing online learning efforts to help accelerate productive use of these systems in the future. The goal of this research was to understand what benefits colleges and universities expect from online learning technologies, what barriers they face in implementing them, and how these technologies might be best shaped to serve different types of institutions.

Ithaka S+R is conducting a multi-year research study to examine whether use of sophisticated, interactive modes of online learning can improve educational effectiveness and reduce costs in higher education. Our focus is on large, introductory courses, especially gateway courses in disciplines that are well-suited for online learning. 

Ithaka S+R and the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) are studying how libraries, archives, museums, and historical societies are sustaining digitized special collections.

This two-year, two-phase research project focuses on members of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), 126 institutions in the United States and Canada, and will involve a survey and case studies. The survey aims to:

Tens of millions of dollars, pounds, and euros are invested each year by government agencies and private foundations to develop and support digital resources in the not-for-profit sector. As budgets tighten, will these digital resources be able to survive and thrive?

This question is at the heart of the Ithaka S+R Case Studies in Sustainability series, a multi-year, international exploration of the strategies being used to support digital initiatives over the long term.

In 2009 Ithaka S+R investigated the sustainability strategies of twelve digital content projects in the higher education and cultural heritage sectors in the US, UK, France, Germany, and Egypt. Two years and one economic crisis later, Ithaka S+R, with the generous support of the JISC-led Strategic Content Alliance, decided to revisit the original twelve case studies to see how their models had held up, where weaknesses might be starting to show, and what new strategies project leaders were adopting in response.

The original case study in 2009 explored Hindawi’s transition from a subscription-based journal operation to an all open access publisher, with the bulk of revenues derived from fees from authors rather than subscription charges.

The original case study, "The Middle School Portal 2 (MSP2): Math and Science Pathways, National Science Digital Library: Early Sustainability Planning for a Grant-Funded Digital Library," profiled a new grant-supported initiative: a portal devoted to collecting high-quality teaching resources for use by middle school educators. The resource was part of the National Science Foundation’s National Science Digital Library (NSDL) program, a collection of online resources for educators in STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics).

In 2009 the Department of Digital Humanities (DDH), formerly known as the Centre for Computing in the Humanities (CCH), presented the model of a successful cross-disciplinary collective of digital practitioners engaged in teaching and research, with knowledge transfer activities and a significant number of research grants contributing to its ongoing revenue plan.