Online courses and course materials may soon be coming to computers near you.
Though some professors already make their lectures accessible to students on Blackboard, Duke-unlike some peer institutions-does not have a Web site that allows students to take entire courses or openly view course materials online. That may not, however, be the case for future students, Provost Peter Lange said.
"The basic reason we haven't done this in the past is unless it can be done in a way that delivers courses at a level we expect a Duke course to be delivered, we wouldn't want to do it," he said.
Lange said Duke considered such an initiative seven or eight years ago, but the technology was too costly and could not effectively offer an experience meeting standards demanded by the University.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, however, took a different route. Instead of offering full courses online, MIT's OpenCourseWare site openly provides course materials such as syllabi, lectures and activities to the general public.
"It's nice to be able to look up old stuff and class materials," said MIT sophomore Mason Tang, an undergraduate representative for the MIT Council on Educational Technology. "It's also a good way for students to preview classes they're thinking about taking."
The benefits are threefold, Steve Carson, external relations director of OpenCourseWare, wrote in an e-mail. The Web site lets students and alumni stay connected with the university, helps improve teaching and learning at MIT and showcases the university's curriculum to the rest of the world, he added.
Associate Professor of Economics Connel Fullenkamp has taken the first step toward online education at Duke by posting his lectures online.
"It was a piece of technology that would help students get more of the material and get it in an accessible way," he said. "I was also really curious to know how it would affect attendance at lectures and whether some students would use it as a substitute for lectures."
What Fullenkamp discovered, he said, was that students were not skipping class more than usual and instead, found the lectures helpful to watch over and use as supplements.
After the launch of OpenCourseWare, Carson said MIT reported similar results, with less than four percent of the faculty reporting drops in attendance.
Freshman Peter Bang took Fullenkamp's Economic Principles course last semester, but said he did not find the online lectures helpful when he missed class.
"They were really time-consuming because to watch one lecture you'd have to sit in front of the computer and watch it for an hour and 15 minutes," he said.
Although sophomore Will Patrick has used OpenCourseWare for research and said he supports a Duke version of the site, he said he would not jump at the chance to cut down his overload by taking a course online.
"I value interactions with professors and enjoy class discussion," he said. "You just can't get that with online classes."
Fullenkamp said he does not find solely online courses helpful or useful to students seeking a quality education.
"I think online courses are not going to be as good of an experience across the board, and furthermore I don't think that's what people are looking for when they come to Duke for an education," he said. "People who are really behind this drive to online education don't realize that the education process is more about developing a relationship than about delivering the material."
But for now, the possibility of creating a course-based Duke site is still being investigated, Lange said. If implemented, whether the online resources will resemble MIT's OpenCourseWare or be full courses offered on the Web is still unclear.
"I would say it's very exploratory at this point," Lange said. "But the fundamental issue is, 'Can we do it at a quality level that one expects of Duke?'"
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