Bloom's Sixth

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…

It’s the little things we miss when our routines change. This isn’t the working whistle. It’s the one on display in the Kansas Union. As classes move online, those little things will add up for faculty, staff and students. We won’t bump into colleagues along Jayhawk Boulevard. There will be no chalking on sidewalks on Wescoe Beach, no sound of the fountain on West Campus Drive, no view of the Campanile over Potter Lake, no smell of books in the stacks at Watson Library, no view of the flags atop Fraser Hall. We can …

One aspect of online teaching that I feared would make it less enjoyable for me as an instructor is that my students and I wouldn’t get to know one another as well as we do in our in-person courses. I thought that it would be difficult to replicate the interaction and dynamic atmosphere of a classroom where we all exchange ideas, participate in thoughtful discussions, challenge each other’s beliefs and positions, develop an understanding of and respect for one another, and come to care about each other as fellow humans. As I have developed new courses and adjusted and redesigned old…

This is what teaching online looks like. That’s not quite right. This is what planning for teaching online looks like after a week and a weekend of long days and an early meeting on Monday morning. About noon, I looked down and realized I was wearing mismatched boots. Some people wear mismatched socks. I wear mismatched boots. Rather than hide them, I showed them to everyone I met on what was probably the last day of in-person meetings for quite some time. I emailed the photo to colleagues and to my students. Everyone needed the laugh. “We’re not really laughing at you,” Diana Koslowsky…

Take a deep breath. You are about to launch into an online adventure. Yes, I know, you didn’t want to take this trip. The corona virus – and the university – made you do it. Like it or not, though, we are all on the same trip, one that will take us deep into the uncharted territory of a quickly deployed online teaching and learning matrix of enormous scale. This involves not just the University of Kansas, but hundreds of colleges and…