Brodhead Center at night

What’s Next

In the coming year, we have much more to do.

  • We will partner with schools and departments to launch new online courses, programs and level-ups.
  • We will launch the first version of Kits—our effort to improve and streamline access to Duke’s ecosystem of ed tech tools.
  • Our next NextEd Festival this coming October will feature themes ranging from equity and inclusion in teaching to “future-proofing” our educational efforts.
  • We will expand our R&D efforts, including the launch of a service designed to streamline educational research efforts for faculty.
  • We will introduce a new Digital Education Fellows program that offers Duke Ph.D. students valuable digital design and development skills, supports the learning needs of Duke students and empowers Duke faculty with a new corps of graduate student apprentices.
  • We will continue to support faculty excellence in teaching and learning through our Faculty Fellows and Course Design Institutes.

We’re eager to continue to partner with the Duke community on these efforts and more.

Current priority areas for 2018-2020

Blue Bridge (Redesign College Access Through Digital Learning)

Partner with Duke Undergraduate Admissions and high schools or community-based organizations to pilot a digital learning program for talented, low-income high school students that would allow them to sample Duke learning experiences, gain college-readiness skills and introduce them to our community of learners.

Status: Pilot began in Fall 2017 in partnership with RePublic High School. Seeking additional pilot sites for Fall 2018. We will continue to add pilots as we gather more efficacy data.

Mastery Learning Through Co-curriculum

  • Partner with Trinity and Pratt to support the digitally-enhanced redesign of first-year mathematics and science pathways courses (e.g. calculus and statistics), common bottlenecks to STEM majors, especially for at-risk groups.
  • Build 2-3 co-curricular “level-ups,” short digital learning experiences that help students meet the prerequisites of courses or programs (e.g., “Civic Engagement in American Democracy”), enhance skills (e.g. Online Roots courses) or bridge from college to careers (e.g., Coursera for Duke).
  • Link mathematics and statistics level-ups to the redesign of these courses, preparing students in areas of need and offering opportunities for deliberate practice.

Status: Civic Engagement in American Democracy (a.k.a. U.S. Civics Level-Up) pilot and Coursera for Duke career bridge certificates both launched in January 2018. Interest from Trinity in applying level-ups to an overall strategy to rethink STEM intro courses. Other projects are in the exploratory phase.

Forever Duke Online

  • Build 2-3 online or hybrid learning experiences in partnership with the Duke Alumni Association (DAA) and Career Services to support alumni professional development, community and engagement with Duke.
  • Programs currently in development include a new model of 4+4 career support for recent graduates that would support alumni.

Status: Three projects are under development on 1) the transitions of emerging adulthood (the “quarter-life crisis”); 2) physician burnout (with DAA and School of Medicine Alumni Affairs); and 3) entrepreneurship (alumni course on leadership w/ Sanyin Siang launched May 2018).

Kits – the Duke Learning App Store

  • Reimagine Duke academic technology as a partnership with majors and programs that begins with learning goals and then designs a selection of learning apps and experiences that help faculty and students achieve those goals.
  • License approximately 30 new learning apps across the university; partner with OIT to integrate and support these technologies.
  • Pilot “Designed Learning Experiences,” selections of learning apps curated by instructional designers and faculty, in 2-3 programs or courses (e.g., Nursing, Trinity calculus).
  • Assess which technologies deliver expected learning outcomes; scale up those that are effective; drop those that are not.

Status: Partnered with Duke OIT to develop a “Discovery Overview” which details the overall need and lays out a development plan. Recently licensed GradeScope campus-wide, which will provide a test case for the Kits ed tech-centric strategy. Duke OIT supports a partnership to develop Kits. Development ongoing–minimum viable product coming Fall 2018.

Learning R&D Lab

  • Establish a lab dedicated to applied research to improve Duke’s teaching and learning practices and environment and to develop new approaches to instructional challenges.
  • Develop a “phased trial” approach that calibrates investments in pilots and scale-up as we gather more data on efficacy.
  • Broker partnerships between learning scientists and faculty who are interested in offering their courses as test-beds.
  • Develop policies and processes that balance student data privacy with the need for continuous improvement and evidence-based practices.
  • Clean and securely share Duke’s Coursera data sets for research applications.
  • Manage Office of Naval Research collaborative review grant.

Status: Seeking faculty partnerships, e.g., with Bridgette Hard in Psychology and Neuroscience.

Online Professional Programs

  • Co-develop masters or certificate programs in partnership with a Duke professional school.
  • Support the the development of these programs with an internal Online Program Management (OPM) model, that provides shared services (instructional design, production, market research) and investment from an internal venture fund in return for a revenue share or cost-recovery.

Status: Assisting Pratt in the analysis of the potential new master’s. Hired a Market Research Analyst to support new degree and certificate program opportunity analysis. Conducting market research for several schools.

Digital Education Fellowship

  • Design a new graduate fellowship program that offers Duke Ph.D. students valuable digital design and development skills, supports the learning needs of Duke students, and empowers Duke faculty with a new corps of graduate student apprentices
  • Partner with the Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Affairs, the Graduate School and the Ph.D. Lab to co-teach a seminar that grounds Digital Education Fellows in digital pedagogy, connects fellows with faculty clients and supports fellows through their apprenticeship

Status: Planning and design phase ongoing. Will announce opportunities to Duke Ph.D. students Fall 2018. First digital pedagogy course will start Spring 2019. First apprentice cohort starts Fall 2019.

Duke Kunshan University

  • In partnership with Duke Kunshan, design and offer a year-long online course design community and professional development program for all incoming Duke Kunshan faculty.
  • Translate lessons to Duke faculty development programs, including creating a similar online community development approach to course design.

Status: First Duke Kunshan Learning Innovation Fellows program ran January – May 2018. Learning Innovation staff participated in interview process for next wave of Duke Kunshan faculty.