Bloom's Sixth

By Doug Ward Course redesign has become a crucial piece of helping college students succeed. The statistics below about enrollment and graduation rates make it clear that success is too often elusive. Course redesign is hardly the only solution to that problem, but it is a proven, tangible step that colleges and universities can take. Course redesign involves moving away from faculty-centered lectures and adopting student-centered techniques that improve learning. It usually includes online work that students do outside of class and in-…

By Doug Ward PALO ALTO, Calif. – Nearly all college faculty members want to teach well but few have both the pedagogical background to make their classes more student-centered and the incentive to do so, the Nobel laureate Carl Wieman said Monday. Carl Wieman (Stanford photo) Wieman, a physics professor at Stanford, has been a leader in promoting effective teaching practices in the sciences, primarily through his Science Education Initiative. He spoke Monday at a meeting of …

Doug Ward In this month’s Teaching Matters (There was a link, but it does not exist anymore), Mike Vitevitch writes about his experiences in having honors students give group presentations in lieu of a final exam. Vitevitch, a professor of psychology, says he was “bowled over” by the quality of the students’ work at the end of the spring semester. As he explains in the accompanying video, honors students in Introduction to Psychology tend to do very well on exams. They know the material, and Vitevitch…

David McConnell sees both benefit and paradox in active learning. McConnell, a professor of marine, earth and atmospheric sciences at North Carolina State University, spoke to members of the geology department at KU last week about his research into active learning and his work in helping others adopt active learning techniques in their classes. David McConnell, in a photo from his N.C. State profile…

Self and Oswald halls are the first new dorms to open at KU in nearly 50 years (There was a link, but the page no longer exist). The living spaces look much like what you’d expect from dorm rooms. The informal spaces, though, provide a modern, visually appealing take on informal, collaborative learning. (They are also great for just hanging out.) The new dorms were open for tours late last week. Here is some of what I found.

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…

After a session at the KU Teaching Summit last week, I spoke with a faculty member whose question I wasn’t able to get to during a discussion. The session, Classrooms and the Future of Education, focused on how KU is working to create and renovate classrooms for active learning. Universities around the country are doing the same, putting in movable tables and chairs, and adding nontraditional furniture, whiteboards, monitors, and various digital accoutrements to make collaboration and hands-on learning easier, and learning environments more inviting. The faculty member at my session said…

At workshops for graduate teaching assistants on Monday, I shared one of my favorite quotes about education. It’s from Joi Ito, director of MIT’s Media Lab. In a TED Talk on innovation last year, he said: “Education is what people do to you. Learning is what you do to yourself.” Andrea Greenhoot, director of the Center for Teaching Excellence, leads a discussion during the open session of the GTA conference at KU…

Learning matters. That may seem like a truism in the world of education – at least it should be – but it isn’t. All too often, schools and teachers, colleges and professors worry more about covering the right material than helping students learn. They put information above application. They emphasize the what rather than the why and the how. In an essay in Inside Higher Ed, Stephen Crew of Samford University makes an excellent case for…

The School of Engineering at KU will open several new active learning classrooms this fall. I’ve been involved in planning some of the summer training sessions for the rooms, so I’ve had a chance to explore them and see how they will work. I’ve written before about the ways that room design can transform learning. Well-designed rooms reduce or eliminate the anonymity of a…