Bloom's Sixth

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…

Distilling hundreds of comments about the future of the university into something manageable and meaningful is, in understated terms, a challenge. The university’s department of Analytics and Institutional Research accomplished that, though, creating a 73-item list that summarizes ideas from a fall planning session and from comments submitted through an online portal. That list, titled What We Could Do at KU, was distributed to the 150 or so university employees who gathered last week for…

WASHINGTON – As colleges and universities prepare to encounter what has become known as a cliff in traditional student enrollment, they are looking for ways to reach out, branch out, and form partnerships that might once have been unthinkable. That desire to branch out was clear from the sessions I attended at the annual meeting of the Association of American Colleges and Universities. For instance, speakers at the conference urged colleagues and their universities to…

By Doug Ward The end of a semester is always hectic, but it’s important to spend time reflecting on your classes while things are still fresh in your mind. Did students learn what you had hoped? If not, what do you need to change the next time you teach the class? What activities or assignments led to unexpected results or fell short of your expectations? What readings did students struggle with and how can you help students grasp them better? What discussion areas resulted in a mostly silent classroom? What elements of your syllabus did students find unclear and need revision? Those…

Jennifer Roberts doesn’t hold back when describing her first attempt at active learning in a large lecture course. “It was a train wreck,” said Roberts, a professor of geology who is now chair of the department. “It was bloody. Students were irate.” Jennifer Roberts works with students in Geology 101. This was in Geology 101, a required course for geology majors and one that typically draws a large number of engineering students. Starting in 2013, Roberts worked with a…

I’ve been doubtful about the emergence of a Generation Z. Strangely, Harry Potter and Katniss Everdeen, along with some reassurances from Pew Research, have me reconsidering. Before I get to Hogwarts and …

Enrollment at Kansas regents universities declined again this year. I say again because enrollment has declined each year since 2011. The decline – 5.7% since 2011 — is relatively small, but it illustrates the challenges of a state university system that has become increasingly dependent on student tuition dollars to finance operations. It also illustrates the challenges that regents…

A recent meeting at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine achieved little consensus on how best to evaluate teaching, but it certainly showed a widespread desire for a fairer system that better reflects the many components of excellent teaching. The National Academies co-sponsored the meeting earlier this month in Washington with the Association of American Universities and …

Watching David Johnson’s class in digital logic design is a bit like watching synchronized swimming. After a few minutes of announcements, Johnson and half a dozen GTAs and undergraduate teaching fellows fan out across an Eaton Hall auditorium as 60 or so students begin to work on problems that Johnson has assigned. David Johnson works with a student during Introduction to Digital Logic Design. A hand goes up on one side of the room. Johnson approaches, and students around him listen intently as he asks questions and quietly offers advice. Across the aisle, a group of four young men…

Ann Austin calls for a show of hands during her keynote address at the Teaching Summit. We know the story well. We helped write it, after all. As instructors and students and administrators, we have lived the story of modern higher education. And yet, despite the familiarity of that story – or perhaps because of it – we continue to struggle with its meaning and direction. Ann Austin, an education professor and administrator at Michigan State, told participants at KU’s annual…