Bloom's Sixth

Alma Clayton-Pedersen offers this vision for higher education: “Imagine what a nation we would be if students really took away everything we wanted them to have,” she said at last week’s Teaching Summit in Lawrence. Alma Clayton-Pedersen at the KU Teaching Summit Problem is, they don’t. Much of the reason for that, she said, has to do with their background, the quality of the education they received before college, the way they are treated in college, and the connections they feel – or don’t feel – to their peers, their instructors and their campus. We talk about college readiness as…

The future of teaching went on display Friday afternoon in Spooner Hall. By display, I mean the 30-plus posters that hung from the walls of The Commons, documenting the changes that KU faculty members and post-doctoral teaching fellows made to courses this academic year. Greg Baker of geology explains his poster to Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little. The poster session was the culmination of this year’s C21 Course Redesign Consortium(There was a link but the page no longer exists), but it included work from participants in last year’s …

Innovation, meet frustration. I’ve written frequently about how the lack of a reward system hampers (if not quashes) attempts to improve teaching and learning, especially at research universities.  A new survey only reinforces that short-sighted approach. The survey was conducted by the…

Among academics, online education inspires about as much enthusiasm as a raft sale on a cruise ship. That’s unfortunate, given that higher education’s cruise ship has a hull full of leaks and has been taking on water for years. The latest evidence of academic disdain for online education comes from the Online Report Card, which is sponsored by the Online Learning Consortium and other organizations (There was a link, but the page does not exist anymore), and has been published yearly since 2003. It is based on surveys conducted by Babson Survey Research Group in Fall 2015. In that…

Earlier this week, I interrupted two students in a small room at Spahr Engineering Library at KU. Tom Ellison, left, and Nathan Marlow at Spahr Engineering Library. The students, Tom Ellison and Nathan Marlow, were working on problems for a dynamics class. Each had tablet computers and used styluses to work problems by hand in OneNote. Ellison’s computer was connected wirelessly to a large monitor on a wall, via an adaptor he checked out from the library, and the two of them conversed and shared ideas as they worked. It was an impressive scene of collaboration in a space that makes…

Most Americans still see a four-year degree as important, but it is not at the top of the list of things that will help someone achieve a successful career, a recent Heartland Monitor poll suggests. In the poll, respondents ranked technology skills, an ability to work with diverse groups of people, keeping skills current, and having family connections above a four-year college degree. They certainly didn’t dismiss a college education. More than half said a…

Higher education has an image problem. And a trust problem. That should come as no surprise, given the drubbing that public colleges and universities have taken from state legislatures over the past few years. They have also taken criticism from federal policy makers – along with parents and students – about costs and transparency. The latest sign of flagging trust comes from a national poll from the Robert Morris University Polling Institute (There was a link, but the page no longer exists) in Pittsburgh. More than half of parents polled said colleges and universities weren’t…

No one disputes that college tuition has risen substantially over the past 20 years. Ask why, though, and you’ll get vastly different answers. Writing in The New York Times, Paul Campos, a professor at the University of Colorado, dismisses the idea that declining state subsidies have led to rising tuition. Instead, he writes, “the astonishing rise in college tuition correlates closely with a huge increase in public subsidies for higher education.” Vox…

I often roll my eyes at articles that take millennials to task for not measuring up to the standard of the day. All too often, baby boomers and those in generations before seem to wag their fingers at young people and spew out curmudgeonly laments that inevitably start with, “When I was your age …” Sample questions, above and below, from the international survey of millennials’ skills As I dug into a new report by the Educational Testing Service (There was a link, but the page no longer exists), though, I began to buy into the concerns it raises about the skills of American…

Faculty often see the benefits of online education for students but not for themselves, Karen H. Sibley and Ren Whitaker write in Educause. Development of online courses takes precious time away from other activities that generate greater rewards for faculty. The way to change that, Sibley and Whitaker argue, is to offer incentives to move into online education. They give these examples: Providing compensation as salary, research funds, or time (e.g., a course buy-out) Appealing to a…