9 easy ways to improve student engagement

9 easy ways to improve student engagement

By Doug Ward

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.

It’s time to move beyond a bogeyman view of assessment

It’s time to move beyond a bogeyman view of assessment

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.

Making peer review of teaching more meaningful

Making peer review of teaching more meaningful

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.

Using data to illuminate teaching and learning

Using data to illuminate teaching and learning

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.

How students have taken learning into the community

How students have taken learning into the community

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.

CTE-associated work leads to national awards

CTE-associated work leads to national awards

By Doug Ward

Projects associated with programs at the Center for Teaching Excellence have led to national recognition for two KU professors.

As campus bookstores disappear, universities lose an intellectual touchstone

As campus bookstores disappear, universities lose an intellectual touchstone

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.

Study links rising tuition to decreased diversity

Study links rising tuition to decreased diversity

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.

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