Bloom's Sixth

  By Doug Ward When Mark Mort began remaking a 100-level biology course a few years ago, he asked instructors who had taught the class what they thought students needed. “Not surprisingly, the answers were very much content, content, content,” said Mort, an associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology. Then he went to colleagues who taught classes later in the curriculum, courses for which his course, Biology 152, was a prerequisite. He asked what they expected students to know after taking Biology 152, or Principles of Organismal Biology. Their response? Nothing…

By Doug Ward Research universities generally say one thing and do another when it comes to supporting effective teaching. That is, they say they value and reward high-quality teaching, but fail to back up public proclamations when it comes to promotion and tenure. They say they value evidence in making decisions about the quality of instruction but then admit that only a small percentage of the material faculty submit for evaluation of teaching is of high quality. That’s one finding from …

By Doug Ward and Mary Deane Sorcinelli BOULDER, Colo. – Symbolism sometimes makes more of a difference than money in bringing about change in higher education. That’s what Emily Miller, associate vice president for policy at the Association of American Universities, has found in her work with the AAU’s Undergraduate STEM Initiative. It’s also a strategy she…

By Doug Ward and Mary Deane Sorcinelli BOULDER, Colo. – Symbolism sometimes makes more of a difference than money in bringing about change in higher education. That’s what Emily Miller, associate vice president for policy at the Association of American Universities, has found in her work with the AAU’s Undergraduate STEM Initiative. It’s also a strategy she…

By Doug Ward Let’s call it pride. That’s probably the best way to describe the look of Sandra Gautt as she wandered among the 45 posters and the dozens of people at The Commons in Spooner Hall. Xianglin Li and Moein Moradi from mechanical engineering discuss the work that went into their posters. Gautt, former vice provost for faculty development, returned to KU for CTE’s third annual end-of-semester poster session on teaching. More than 40 instructors from more than 30 departments contributed posters, demonstrating the work they had done over the past year transforming classes to…

Consider a few of the changes roiling public higher education. Technology has created new ways for students to learn and to earn credentials but has also eliminated the need for a physical presence in many courses. …

Two recent education conferences I attended raised similar questions about developing and sustaining high-quality teaching. Things like: How do we measure the success of course transformation? How can we get buy-in from colleagues? How do we gain the support of department chairs and administrators? How do we share ideas among campuses? How do we sustain and grow communities around the idea of improving teaching? That last question was central to both conferences, one at KU and one at the University of California, Davis. Participants in the Trestle launch…