Bloom's Sixth

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…

The shift to remote teaching this semester quickly became a form of torture by isolation inflicted upon us by microscopic organisms. There has to be a bright spot somewhere, though. Right? 13 days until isolation. A carefully planned list of 1,368 VERY IMPORTANT THINGS to do during spring break dissolves before my eyes as I am enlisted to help create a website on remote teaching. In a university conference room, a dozen people stare at laptop computers. Half-a-dozen others peer out like the Brady Bunch from a videoconference screen running Zoom. I fear this is a premonition. “The…

This seems a perfect message for a world of shut-ins. It may very well have been created before the Covid-19 mess, but I came across it only about 10 days ago. The window is on the east side of Chalmers Hall, and it is visible only from a distance. No doubt it was created by a “Star Trek” fan. It refers to a constant refrain of the Borg, a collective of machine-enhanced beings who traverse the galaxy, conquer at will and announce: “Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.” If the corona virus could speak, it might say something much like that. So we resist in whatever way we can.…

With apologies to the late Warren Zevon, isolation is hardly splendid – at least when it is forced upon us. I wrote last week about ways to create structure and belonging for students in online classes. Later in this post, you will find some information about student mental health, which was shaky even before the forced isolation. Data…

The fog that settled on the Lawrence campus Monday morning seemed all too fitting. Classes officially resumed after an extended spring break, but Jayhawk Boulevard was mostly empty, as were the buses that passed by. Faculty and students alike ventured into a hazy online learning environment cobbled together with unseen computer chips and hidden strings of code. Even the most optimistic took slow, careful steps onto a path with an uncertain end point. A view east along Jayhawk Boulevard from near Marvin Hall. We’re all feeling disoriented in this virtual fog, and it’s especially important…