All Completed Projects: 2020-2021

Teaching Innovation

The Teaching Innovation team consults with and advises Duke faculty on their teaching, leads development programs for educators and helps improve student learning at Duke. 

  • Consulted with and assisted Duke faculty, staff and students with transitioning away from Duke’s previously-supported portfolio tool, Pebblepad.
  • Supported six graduate students with in-depth digital education projects in the 2020-21 Digital Education Fellows Program. You can learn more about each Fellow and their projects in our Spotlight blog series.
  • With the Duke Kunshan University Center for Teaching and Learning, implemented the fourth annual 11-week-long DKU Learning Innovation Fellows program, a teaching development and orientation program for new DKU faculty (March – June 2021).
  • Provided training and support for instructors in summer 2021 Duke Graduate Academy programs, and lead the Graduate Academy on Online College Teaching (June 7-11).
  • During Summer 2021, provided training and support for instructors in Duke Continuing Studies’ Pre-College and Duke Youth Programs summer session courses.
  • During May 2021, with Online Duke colleagues, led 3 workshops on online course design for Duke Divinity School faculty. 
  • Offered Spring 2021 discussion series about teaching practices to support student well-being (example)
  • Offered Spring 2021 series of teaching workshops targeted to TAs but open to all (example).
  • During Spring 2021, completed virtual Small Group Instructional Feedback sessions for Duke faculty
  • Over winter break 2020-21, offered 4-session Course Design workshop series (example) and 3 faculty “experience sharing” sessions (example) to help faculty prepare for Spring 2021 teaching.
  • Over Winter break 2020-21, hosted Graduate Academy on Online College Teaching to prepare graduate students as TAs and instructors in online/hybrid courses and faculty course design programs to prepare faculty to teach online/hybrid courses in Spring 2021.
  • Planned and implemented fall faculty discussion and sharing sessions about hybrid/online teaching (example).
  • Partnered with Bass Connections to help faculty design, develop and teach Collaborative Inquiry courses (program ran Dec 2019-Dec 2020).
  • Provided course design consultation for online/hybrid teaching for almost 60 high enrollment Fall courses.
  • During Summer 2020, scheduled and offered 17 virtual workshops and faculty discussion sessions to help Duke faculty prepare for Fall Flexible teaching.
  • Provided substantial help drafting content for the Flexible Teaching website, including a self-service Course Design Planner to assist faculty with online/hybrid course design.
  • With others in DLI, staffed 6-15 hours/week (12-45 person hours/week) of online drop-in office hours for instructors.
  • Provided Teaching Assistant training, a twice-repeated 4-workshop series offered in the summer in partnership with the Graduate School, to support courses that have TAs over the summer, followed by a 6-workshop series in the fall. Enrolled over 500 TAs.
  • Ran weeklong summer 2020 Graduate Academy on Online College Teaching for over 50 graduate students.
  • Created a teaching guide for TAs on the Flexible Teaching website.
  • Oriented two new staff in term positions as faculty consultants. 

Online Learning

The Online Duke team helps faculty develop online learning opportunities that offer flexibility to Duke students, reach the extended community of alumni and prospective students and extend Duke’s global impact. 

  • Advised a Bass Digital Education Fellow on the design of a self-paced online course on introductory programming for online social science experiments.
  • Launched a Coursera Specialization on Building Cloud Solutions at Scale.
  • Completed launch of first two courses of Divinity’s Theology in Healthcare certificate, Cultivating the Christian Imagination, Parts I and II.
  • Completed market research for the Nicholas School of the Environment to inform the design of stackable credentials for Nicholas’ master’s programs and innovative online executive education offerings.
  • Piloted a training module on Biostatistics for Medical Researchers, in partnership with +Data Science and the Department of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics.
  • Finished course site design consultations for postgraduate education for the Departments of Obstetrics & Gynecology and Anesthesiology in the Duke School of Medicine.
  • Expanded Coursera for Duke to give our community access to the full Coursera catalogue (not just Duke-developed courses as we had offered previously) as courseware to accelerate new online course development or as independent learning opportunities. This Coursera learning program has yielded over 4,700 course enrollments in the first three months, between July and September 2020.
  • Launched Coursera for Duke Alumni. 
  • Redesigned assessments for Duke’s English Composition I Coursera course to be completed in a self-assessment format.
  • Re-launched Duke’s four Think Again Coursera courses as a Specialization titled, “Introduction to Logic and Critical Thinking”.
  • Launched teaching assistant (TA) training modules to provide TAs foundational knowledge on counseling resources for students, student privacy, academic integrity, and Title IX policies on sexual misconduct and harassment.
  • Hired a new Learning Experience Designer who will support Learning Innovation’s ongoing partnership with the Duke Divinity School.
  • Completed a competitive landscape analysis for the Duke Divinity School to inform their design of a certificate program for health clinicians of faith.
  • Finalized Duke’s agreement with Coursera to launch non-credit Certificates, a new type of credential that stacks into a master’s program. The Pratt School of Engineering will launch Duke’s first Coursera Certificate in Blockchain Applications in February 2021, which will prepare learners for Pratt’s Master of Engineering in Financial Technology. 

Learning Technologies

The Learning Technologies team breaks down barriers between teaching, learning, and technology at the university. 

  • Investigate the edtech landscape for discussion tools.
  • Upgraded Sakai to version 20 on December 21.
  • Partnered with OIT to allow faculty to more easily create, edit, and share videos by integrating Panopto with Sakai.
  • Evaluated online whiteboard tools to support faculty who communicate with students with drawings as well as text and images.
  • Engaged Hypothes.is to license their enterprise annotation tool to encourage deeper student interactions with texts and one another.
  • Scoped an Edstem pilot with Computer Science to aid communication in computational courses.
  • Completed Sakai Administrator account audit. 
  • Reconfigured Sakai Delegated Access and moved support staff across the university from Sakai Administrator access to Delegated Access.
  • Completed Instructor and Student user story mapping for the next version of Nudge.
  • Added Virtual Computer Manager (VCM) to Kits.
  • Gave Kits administrators the ability to search all kits. 

Research, Evaluation and Development

The Research, Evaluation and Development team supports research and experimentation on teaching and learning across the Duke community with an emphasis on early-stage projects and translational research. 

  • Led several data collection efforts throughout the Summer and Fall to assess faculty needs around Flexible teaching and collected feedback.
  • Supporting research in Pratt School of Engineering to examine the role that 3D printing maker spaces play in attracting women to engineering majors.
    • This research project is a mixed-method design involving both surveys with Pratt undergraduates and in-depth interviews with students who have engaged with the 3D printing spaces on campus. 
  • Provided support for Duke’s Flexible Teaching initiative to support faculty members teaching remotely during the Summer and Fall 2020 semesters including:
    • Developing and leading workshops
    • Creating website content
    • Developing course blueprint guides
    • Staffing online office hours for faculty
    • Providing dedicated support to designated large-enrollment classes
  • Consulted with Nasher Museum of Art staff to develop robust course evaluation tools to incorporate in their thematic learning modules provided to Duke faculty across the university. 
  • Partnered with Dr. Sheila Patek, director and founder of Muser, to conduct research on the impacts of using technology to anonymously match undergraduates to faculty-led research opportunities.
  • Recent Publications: In addition to helping faculty design and execute their own teaching and learning research projects, our Research, Evaluation and Development team (led by Kim Manturuk) produced publications of their own research, including: