Bloom's Sixth

The Kansas Legislature and governor often treat colleges and universities like deadbeat relatives they wish would just go away rather than partners in navigating the future. That wasn’t always the case, but budget decisions over the past 15 years show waning support for higher education. Inflation-adjusted state dollars spent by the six Kansas Regents universities have fallen 22.2 percent since the 2002 fiscal year. State money for universities peaked that year at an inflation-adjusted amount…

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 …

Three students in an upper-level physics class designed and built a tabletop lightboard for their final project this semester. Lightboards are used in creating online videos for classes. They allow instructors to write on a glass pane as they would a whiteboard. A camera is positioned facing the instructor, capturing the writing on the glass as the instructor speaks. The image must then be flipped so that the writing can be read in the video. The approach is especially popular among STEM instructors. John Rinnert of KU IT inspects the lightboard created by Conner Brown and other students…

The ASU GSV Summit bills itself as a gathering of entrepreneurs, policymakers, business leaders and educators who want “to create partnerships, explore solutions, and shape the future of learning.” That sort of described the event, which was held last week in San Diego. Yes, it was possible to find a few real discussions about education, but only a few. Doug Lederman of Inside…

Hundreds of start-ups and established companies promoted their ideas and educational technology products at the ASU GSV Summit last week in San Diego. Many were quite good, even if they didn’t live up to the magic that some of them promised. I’ll write more later about some of the ideas that emerged from the summit, a gathering of technology companies, investors, and educators. For now, though, I’d like to highlight some of the technologies that stood out as having the most potential. This is anything but a…

The spread of evidence-based teaching practices highlights a growing paradox: Even as instructors work to evaluate student learning in creative, multidimensional ways, they themselves are generally judged only through student evaluations. Students should have a voice. As Stephen Benton and William Cashin write in a broad review of research, student evaluations can help faculty members improve their courses and help administrators spot potential problems in the…

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…

Education changes people. Those of us who teach know that well. We see students transform during their degrees, and sometimes during a semester. Their skills improve. Their thinking deepens. Their confidence blossoms. As it changes minds, though, education also changes the relationships students have with family and friends, adding stress to students’ lives from an unexpected source. Students generally learn to cope with those changes, but they often aren’t sure how to broach the subject with family and friends. They don’t want to anger others, or make them feel diminished. But they also…

Asked to describe the things that help them learn, students provide a remarkably consistent list: Engagement Interaction Clarity Openness Accessibility A sense of belonging That’s hardly a complete list, but those ideas came up again and again during a focus group at KU’s recent Student Learning Symposium. Not surprisingly, those same components come up again and again in research on learning. Holly Storkel accepted the university’s Degree-Level Assessment award on behalf of the Speech-Language Pathology program. She was joined at the Student Learning Symposium by Sara Rosen,…