Bloom's Sixth

By Doug Ward Robin Wright has a clear vision of the future of education. Understanding that future requires a look 6,000 years into the past, though. It requires an assessment of the technological wonders that have promised revolution over the years. It requires an understanding of literacy rates, which have reached 90 percent worldwide. It requires a look into the chemistry of the brain, which reacts to emotion and stress but also to action and interaction. It requires a look outward at the students in our classes. And perhaps most important, it requires a look inward at who we are…

By Doug Ward Here’s one more reason to worry about rising tuition rates: decreased diversity. In an examination of 14 years of tuition increases at public colleges and universities, Drew Allen of Princeton University and Gregory Wolniak of New York University found that for every $1,000 that tuition goes up, racial and ethnic diversity among students goes down by 4.5 percent. To put that into perspective, they point to a College Board report …

By Doug Ward On a recent trip to Amherst, Mass., I strolled through the University of Massachusetts campus looking for a bookstore. There was not a book to be found, at least outside the 30-story library. A technology shop, yes. A natural foods store, yes. A pastry counter, yes. A university apparel store, of course. But a bookstore? For that, you have to travel a mile or so to the Amherst town center. UMass got rid of its physical campus bookstore three years ago. Instead, it has a wall of lockers and a desk staffed by Amazon. As part of a five-year contract the university signed…

By Doug Ward Projects associated with programs at the Center for Teaching Excellence have led to national recognition for two KU professors. Ward Lyles, left, speaks with Krzysztof Kuczera during a session of Diversity Scholars. Ward Lyles, assistant professor of urban planning, received one of three curriculum innovation awards from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. Lyles developed a quantitative methods course that uses team-based…

Collin Bruey and Laura Phillips check out posters at the Service Showcase. Bruey and Phillips created their own poster about work at the Center for Community Outreach. By Doug Ward I’m frequently awed by the creative, even life-changing, work that students engage in. The annual Service Showcase sponsored by the Center for Service Learning, provides an impressive display of that work. This year’s Showcase took place last week. As a judge for the Showcase over the past two years, I’ve learned how…

By Doug Ward BLOOMINGTON, Indiana – We have largely been teaching in the dark. By that, I mean that we know little about our students. Not really. Yes, we observe things about them and use class surveys to gather details about where they come from and why they take our classes. We get a sense of personality and interests. We may even glean a bit about their backgrounds. That information, while helpful, lacks many crucial details that could help us shape our teaching and alert us to potential challenges as we move through the semester. It’s a clear case of not knowing what we don’t…

By Doug Ward A peer review of teaching generally goes something like this: An instructor nears third-year review or promotion. At the request of the promotion and tenure committee, colleagues who have never visited the instructor’s class hurriedly sign up for a single visit. Sometimes individually, sometimes en masse, they sit uncomfortably among wary students for 50 or 75 minutes. Some take notes. Others don’t. Soon after, they submit laudatory remarks about the instructor’s teaching, relieved that they won’t have to visit again for a few years. ChangHwan Kim (left), Tracey LaPierre…

Two vastly different views of assessment whipsawed many of us over the past few days. The first, a positive and hopeful view, pulsed through a half-day of sessions at KU’s annual Student Learning Symposium on Friday. The message there was that assessment provides an opportunity to understand student learning. Through curiosity and discovery, it yields valuable information and helps improve classes and curricula. The second view came in the form of what a colleague accurately described as a “screed” in The New York Times. It argued that assessment turns hapless faculty members into tools of…

Student motivation is one of the most vexing challenges that instructors face. Students can’t learn if they aren’t engaged, and serious classroom material often fails to pique the interest of a generation that has grown up with the constant stimulation of smartphones, social media and video on demand. Some instructors argue that motivation should be up to students, who are paying to come to college, after all. Most certainly, instructors can’t make students learn. Students have to cultivate that desire on their own. Instructors can take many steps to stoke that desire to learn,…

By Doug Ward The University of Kansas has made many gains in its recruitment of minority students, who now make up 20.6 percent of the student body. By at least one measure, though, the university still has considerable work to do. According to an analysis by The Hechinger Report, there is a substantial disparity in the number of Latino students who enroll at…