Bloom's Sixth

The intellectual work that goes into teaching often goes unnoticed. All too often, departments rely on simple lists of classes and scores from student surveys of teaching to “evaluate” instructors. I put “evaluate” in quotation marks because those list-heavy reviews look only at surface-level numerical information and ignore the real work that goes into making teaching effective, engaging, and meaningful. Debby Hudson via Unsplash An annual evaluation is a great time for instructors to document the substantial intellectual work of teaching and for evaluators to put that work front and…

Nearly a decade ago, the Associated Press began distributing articles written by an artificial intelligence platform. Not surprisingly, that news sent ripples of concern among journalists. If a bot could turn structured data into comprehensible – even fluid – prose, where did humans fit into the process? Did this portend yet more ominous changes in the profession? By DALL-E and Doug Ward I bring that up because …

The latest enrollment report for universities in the Kansas regents system (down 1.5%) seems worth little more than a shrug. Longer term, though, the higher education trends in Kansas will require considerable attention – and action. Enrollment at the six regents universities has fallen 13.5%, or 10,100 students, since peaking in 2011. That average masks even bigger declines at individual universities: Pittsburg State, down 28.4% since 2011; K-…

Lisa Sharpe Elles ignites a hydrogen balloon during the first day of Chemistry 130. The poor balloon never had a chance. It was Monday, the first day of fall classes. Lisa Sharpe Elles, assistant teaching professor in chemistry, circled a yellow, hydrogen-filled balloon as it floated above a table in Gray-Little Hall. She told the 200-plus students in Chemistry 130 to cover their ears. She carefully lifted a flame-tipped wooden rod to the balloon and suddenly pulled back. She had remembered the lone fool in the front row. That was me, two cameras poised, awaiting a promised explosion…

As you shake out the post-break cobwebs from your brain and retrain yourself to recognize the half-hidden faces of students, we would like to pass along some exciting news. (Hint: It’s about masks! Yes, masks! Those things that are constantly on your mind – or mouth, or nose, or wherever you are wearing them these days.) First, though, we’d like to remind you how far you have come. Just two short years and an ice age ago, Americans were urged to rummage through musty dresser drawers and even mustier basement boxes for old t-shirts that could be tailored into masks. Unfortunately, that Covid…

The future of higher education may very well hinge on our skill as interpreters and communicators. Too often, though, we never bother to define the terms we use or to help students, parents, and employers understand the purpose and significance of a college education, Ashley Finley told participants at the 2021 KU Teaching Summit last week. Ashley Finley “We develop language as currency,” said Finley, who is vice president for research at the Association of American Colleges and…

As we near the halfway point of what we hope will be the final semester of remote everything, we at CTE encourage you to take a collective breath, put your feet up, and read an important news story you might have missed. We can’t guarantee a happy ending. Then again, that all depends on what you consider happy.        Consider it the week that might have been. LAWRENCE, Kan. (Coronavirus News Service) – Thousands of bleary-eyed students and frazzled faculty members staggered through the University of Kansas campus this week in a desperate search for spring…

Grade point averages for University of Kansas undergraduates rose an average of 8.4% in the spring as instructors offered more flexibility after a shift to remote teaching and more students took advantage of pass/fail grade options. Men saw a slightly larger increase in GPAs than women did (9.1% vs. 7.9%), although women’s GPAs (3.3) were already higher than men’s (3.09) before the coronavirus pandemic. Freshmen had a larger increase in GPAs in the spring (10.7% for men; 10.5% for women). As with undergraduates as a whole, freshman women (3.05) already had higher GPAs than their male…

The headlines about KU’s fall enrollment sounded much like a Minnesotan’s assessment of winter: It could be worse. Indeed it could have been, given the uncertainties brought on by the coronavirus and rumblings among students that they might sit out the year if their courses were online. Depending on how you measure, enrollment on the Lawrence and Edwards campuses …

Dear sleep deprived colleagues, We ask you to take a few minutes to consider these not-so-solemn words. Full disclosure: You have all been muted for the duration of this speech.   Abraham Lincoln was forced to cover his face after seeing this adaptation of his Gettysburg Address. Four score and 700 years ago (or so it seems), the coronavirus brought forth on this campus a new semester, conceived in haste, cloaked in masks, and dedicated to the proposition that all Zoom meetings suck the life from us equally. Now we are engaged in a great civil chore, testing whether this…