Learning Innovation supporting online learning opportunities that offer flexibility to Duke students, reach the extended community of alumni and prospective students, and extend Duke’s global impact.
Duke’s Coursera partnership
- Enrollments in Duke’s Coursera courses since 2012: 5.8 million
- Coursera enrollments in the last 3 years: 1.8 million
- Coursera enrollments in the last 12 months: 479,000
- Coursera Certificates awarded in the last 12 months: 14,861
- Live Duke Coursera courses: 59 plus 5 Specializations
Coursera offerings launched in the past year
FinTech Law and Policy. Designed especially for entrepreneurs and professionals working in the emerging financial technology sector, this course teaches learners about the critical legal, regulatory and policy issues associated with cryptocurrencies, initial coin offerings, online lending, new payments and wealth management technologies and financial account aggregators.
Chimpanzee Behavior and Conservation. Provides learners interested in chimpanzees an appreciation of the deep similarities between chimpanzees and humans in intelligence, tool use, hunting, personality and social relationships, as well as some key differences. The course teaches how chimpanzees interact with their environment and how their behavior is influenced by ecology, as well as the severe conservation challenges they face today.
Civic Engagement and American Democracy. Originally developed as a Level-Up for Sanford undergraduates, this Coursera course provides learners a strong foundational introduction to U.S. politics, including identifying who are the key actors of the U.S. political system and how learners can get involved in the democratic process.
Introduction to Machine Learning course hosted on Coursera and Coursera for Duke (for Duke students, staff and faculty); visit the +DS website (developed by DWS) for more info on upcoming events. Read more about Learning Innovation’s work with the +Data Science initiative in our feature story.
In addition to these new Coursera course launches, Learning Innovation supported faculty to update The Challenges of Global Health as well as improve the rigor of the course’s assessments.
Coursera for Duke and Coursera for Duke Alumni
In December 2017, Learning Innovation launched Coursera for Duke, a new way for Duke students, faculty and staff to gain free access to all of Duke’s Coursera courses and Specializations. As of summer 2019, nearly 2780 Duke staff, students and faculty enrolled in at least one course, with over 700 course completions and over 38,000 hours spent engaging with Coursera for Duke courses. Through a collaboration with Google, we were also able to offer Google Cloud courses to the Duke community through Coursera for Duke.
In Fall 2018, we launched a pilot of Coursera for Duke Alumni to the 173,000 members of the Duke alumni community. While Coursera for Duke Alumni is still in a soft launch phase, we have high hopes for it this year as part of our effort to build a system of lifelong learning that starts as a Duke student and continues with alumni throughout their lives, wherever they are. We see Coursera for Duke Alumni as a means of strengthening our global community, reimagining Duke as a platform for learning and community and supporting our alumni through professional and life pivots with just-in-time infusions of knowledge and community. To accomplish this, we’ll need to deepen our partnerships with the Duke Alumni Association, the Career Centers and the leadership of our schools.
Experimenting with discussion-driven online engagement for alumni
Learning Innovation partnered with Sanyin Siang, Executive Director of Duke University’s Coach K Center on Leadership & Ethics (COLE) at the Fuqua School of Business, and the Duke Alumni Association (DAA) to develop a discussion-driven, short online course on how to launch a new idea, whether a new career, business venture, self-improvement, or other significant change in life. Moving beyond discussion forums, course designers worked with DAA and Sanyin to create interview-style video chats, in which a discussion facilitator and alumni could ask Sanyin questions about that week’s lesson and how course participants could apply what they were learning to their work or lives.
Learning Innovation and DAA will continue to explore models for online engagement in a new alumni online course for physicians: Physician Thriving and Wellness. This five-week digital learning experience will address the problem of physician burnout, which impacts 54% of the medical profession. In addition to using interview-style video chats, this course will experiment with allowing course participants to submit voice recording responses to class discussion questions, which will allow physician participants to engage in conversation when most convenient for them.
+Data Science modules
+DataScience (+DS) is a Duke-wide program, operating in partnership with departments, schools, and institutes to enable faculty, students, and staff to employ data science at a level tailored to their needs, level of expertise, and interests. Learning Innovation collaborated with the +DS team (led by Larry Carin, Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering, and Vice President of Research) and the Duke Web Services (DWS) division of Duke’s Office of Information Technology to develop a series of online modules to complement in-person workshops and events. Visit the Introduction to Machine Learning course hosted on Coursera and Coursera for Duke (for Duke students, staff and faculty); visit the +DS website (developed by DWS) for more info on upcoming events.
More online learning at Duke
Engineering Management Marketing (Pratt School of Engineering). Worked with the faculty from the Pratt Master of Engineering Management to redesign their course’s structure so that each course week centers on a particular theme and each course week’s theme builds upon the last. Also transformed long classroom-recordings into modularized videos with a style guide that fits the brand of the Pratt’s brand and an executive education learning experience.
Systematic Review Methodology (Duke Global Health Institute). Collaborated with faculty from DGHI to redesign this graduate-level course for online delivery, increasing the course’s access to master’s students on field assignment or based at Duke Kunshan University. The redesign included mapping the course’s structure, translating learning activities to be completed online instead of in-person, and create an authentic learning experience that reflects team-based research projects in the field.
Medical Neuroscience (Trinity College of Arts & Sciences). During Summer 2018 and Summer 2019, Learning Innovation partnered with Trinity to pilot an online summer session of Medical Neuroscience, based on content originally developed for a Coursera course. In addition to online modules, the course uses Zoom video chats for office hours sessions between the faculty and students and online proctoring for course exams.
Infectious Diseases Epidemiology in Global Settings: Surveillance, Prevention and Control (DGHI). Supported DGHI’s faculty to update and teach this course online.
Marine Planning (Nicholas School of the Environment). Redesign video lessons with modernized style guide and in a user-friendly format that course faculty and staff can easily edit. Applied pedagogical best practices to course quizzes.
Research Design for Environmental Social Sciences (Nicholas School and Duke University Marine Lab). Updated the design of this hybrid course to increase student participation in online learning activities, use Zoom video chats for class sessions, and improve the design of quizzes and assignments.