Professor Daniel Egger creates a new blended model for teaching and learning for his on-campus and distance education students and “flips” his class using the Coursera Groups feature.
Daniel Egger, executive-in-residence in Duke’s Master’s of Engineering Management program, co-developed (with Jana Schaich-Borg) Excel to MySQL: Analytic Techniques for Business, a high-demand and very successful Coursera specialization.
Professor Egger says developing and teaching a MOOC has impacted his on-campus teaching in several ways.
Experimenting With New Teaching Approaches – Flipped Classroom
“I am experimenting with a “flipped” classroom where I don’t need to deliver lectures in class, and instead use class time to have students do hands-on work on practical problems related to the material. This is more interesting for students and for me, and has been very popular so far.” –Daniel Egger
Egger is using the Coursera Groups tool to create a cohort of his Master of Engineering Management on-campus students and distance education students within his Mastering Data Analysis in Excel Coursera course. With the group tool, instructors can interact with learners by sending announcements, creating private group forums, and exporting group members’ grades to an LMS. Although on-campus students are in a private group, they can still interact with the global learning community and participate in all discussions, creating a blended learning experience.
Reaching Skilled Professionals with Real-life Business Examples
Egger said he is pleased the Excel to MySQL: Analytic Techniques for Business specialization courses are valuable to learners who are already skilled and working in the field.
Read a few of the learner stories:
“I want to thank immensely Dr. Daniel Egger for being such an excellent instructor. Your passion for what you do (teaching and being a Data Scientist) shows and I could feel that same passion. That passion is what makes great teachers great educators, and positive influencers.”
“I have a Masters degree in Electrical Engineering with a work experience in Telecommunications and Business Analysis. Currently, I am looking for a Business Analysis/Data Analysis job. To enhance my skills on my resume I decided to take this specialization…I must say I truly enjoyed listening to your lectures and learning such complex statistical concepts that weren’t as clear to me before. The way you explained and designed quizzes and final projects were “amazing.” Never before have I enjoyed a course so much!!”
“I am a Statistics Applied to Psychology Professor and before taking this course I knew I had a lot to learn. I especially liked the challenging aspect of the course and the fact that the quizzes and test, through real life business examples, do measure competencies, instead of only giving new information.”
Overall, Egger said learning to develop online teaching materials in line with Coursera’s “best practices” has directly impacted his teaching at Duke. “I have come to appreciate how making each step in a process explicit, and explaining along the way what the specific skills learned will be, makes for less wasted time and effort by students and a much more efficient and focused learning experience.”
More on the Excel to MySQL: Analytic Techniques for Business Specialization
- The Impressive Numbers Behind Duke’s New Coursera Specializations
- What Makes Data Analytics So Complex
- Online Analytics Course Tackles a Fast-Moving Field
- Coursera’s Hottest Business MOOCs
Daniel Egger is a great teacher, has a special talent with students, I loved being his student, I am Spanish and I had him as a teacher, now I work in a company called miscampamentos.
I think Daniel Egger inspires a lot of students. Lidia is one good example.
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