Bloom's Sixth

Whenever I give workshops about teaching with technology, I try to provide a handout of resources. This is one I distributed after workshops I led at the Best Practices Institute at CTE last week and at the School of Education. It’s a relatively modest list, but it includes sites for visualizing text; for editing images; for creating maps, charts, infographics; and for combining elements into a multimedia mélange. My goal in creating lists like this is to help instructors think about ways to incorporate multimedia elements and technology into their teaching. I never insist that instructors…

Participants in the Best Practices Institute work on a backward design exercise at the Spahr Engineering Classroom. I’m always surprised at the common themes that emerge when faculty members talk about teaching. Goals and challenges transcend disciplinary boundaries, allowing for robust discussions about learning; class design and preparation; assessment; the struggles of students, and other areas of teaching. In discussions Tuesday at CTE’s Best Practices Institute,…

Bozenna Pasik-Duncan specializes in a branch of probability theory called stochastic systems, which views problems through a lens of randomness. She teaches courses in that area, as well as in subjects like applied statistics, linear algebra and optimization theory. When faced with a high dropout and failure rate among students in a large 100-level calculus class, though, Pasik-Duncan found a solution in a distinctively humanistic…

Angelique Kobler offered an uncomfortable question about education last week. Kobler, assistant superintendent for teaching and learning at the Lawrence school district, met with the KU Task Force on Course Redesign and explained the steady expansion of blended learning in Lawrence public schools. To illustrate the need for new ways of engaging…

Thoughts from two speakers I’ve listened to in the last week have been bouncing around my brain. At Journalism Interactive last week, Richard Hernandez of the University of California, Berkeley, pressed conference participants to experiment with technology that allows new forms of expression. To illustrate his point, he held up a smartphone and said: “You have more information in your pocket than Ronald Reagan had as…

In a previous post, I wrote about my experiences with room design, student behavior and learning. I found that students were far more engaged when I moved class to a collaborative space, and that they reverted to passive behavior when class returned to the traditional space we were assigned. The March issue of …

Saundra McGuire urges faculty members not to judge students’ abilities too quickly or too harshly. She speaks from experience. As a chemistry professor at Cornell and Louisiana State universities, she used to make snap judgments about her students, separating them into achievers and non-achievers. Then she realized that those students who skipped class and didn’t study but then acted surprised at bad grades were “just being good scientists.” Really. (More about that shortly.) A…

CTE is hosting a series of lunchtime workshops for experienced GTAs who want to discuss facets of teaching in higher education. The workshops will take place from noon to 1 p.m. on the final Friday of every month, through April, in 135 Budig Hall. To participate in a session, register at cte@ku.edu at least two days before the event. A light lunch will be provided. Please note that space is limited. If you have any questions or need accommodations, contact Judy Eddy at jeddy@ku.edu. January 31: Using Film in the Classroom Have you always wanted…

My trips to the office of Paul Jess often seemed liked counseling sessions. I was a master’s student at KU in 1990, and I’d go to Jess’s office with a stream of problems: My students weren’t responding as well as I’d hoped, and some even seemed hostile toward me in the classroom. My thesis wasn’t going as well as I’d expected, and I didn’t know where to begin a search for doctoral programs. It all seemed so grave then (and seems so innocuous now). Jess would lean back in his office chair, fold his hands over his bulging stomach, and listen intently. Then he’d smile and nod and…

So, I’ve decided to flip a class.  [File this blog post under ‘Confessions’.]  Specifically, I’m going to flip a course this Spring semester, titled “Design of Steel Structures.”  It’s a fourth-year design class taken by civil and architectural engineers. This is an undertaking that I’m both excited and nervous to tackle.  The part that I’m really looking forward to the most is really, really focusing in on “what should students be able to do” when they’re done with the course.  This is also the part that I am the most nervous about. When I’ve taught this…