This summer, students can pursue a Duke education without being on campus.
Two courses will be offered online for the first time by Duke’s Program in Education and the English department during the summer session, allowing undergraduate students to earn credit while located around the world.
“You can be anywhere,” said Kristen Stephens, assistant professor of the practice in the Program in Education. “You don’t have to be on campus to take this class. You could be going home or you could be abroad.”
Stephens will teach EDUC 168: “Reform in American Classrooms” and Cathy Shuman, visiting assistant professor of English, will teach ENGLISH 109S: “Writing the Experience: Civic Engagement and Creative Nonfiction.”
The two classes were developed by their respective departments and approved by the Committee on Courses, a standing committee on the Arts and Sciences Council, according to an e-mail from Paula Gilbert, associate dean and director of Duke continuing studies and summer session.
Gilbert added that the courses count as Duke academic credit and will cost the same tuition as other summer courses. Although tuition costs are the same, distance learning can provide some monetary benefits.
“In addition to the flexibility of these courses, they can also mean financial savings to students who will not have to budget for on-campus housing and dining,” Gilbert said.
Compared with nearby institutions such as North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, both of which offer more than 300 “distance education” courses, Duke has yet to take part in this online education trend.
“I’m not sure why this has not come up before now,” Ingeborg Walther, director of the Office of Curriculum and Course Development, wrote in an e-mail. “Duke has always taken pride in the fact that it offers relatively small classes… but technology has advanced to the extent that one can now have similar interactions… online.”
She added that the University already incorporates online components—such as discussion boards and blogs— to existing classes, blurring the distinction between traditional and online courses.
Shuman said ENGLISH 109S can only be offered online because it draws from civic engagement experiences, including DukeEngage, the Robertson Scholars Program and independent projects. Students will write creative nonfiction works for the class based on their ventures.
“The course is not online for the sake of being online—it is the only way we can write about our experiences,” Shuman said. “The distance component has to be there since people will be all over the world while they are taking the course.”
The approved courses are conducive to an online learning environment, Stephens said. In addition to incorporating daily news issues from online media, EDUC 168 will require students to take part in eight live, virtual meetings using Adobe Connect, a Web conferencing program.
“We will talk to and see one another through webcams,” Stephens said. “It will be like having a class, but instead of sitting in a room, we’ll sit in a virtual room.”
She added that eight additional asynchronous class periods will include reading assignments, blog posts and quizzes.
Conducted through Blackboard, ENGLISH 109S will require weekly posts and peer reviews, Shuman said. After students complete their civic engagement projects, the last two weeks will involve “intensive” revising and editing to produce a finished compilation of the summer’s assignments, she added.
Although the online aspect is convenient for students, Shuman noted that virtual classes may hinder the social benefits of traditional classrooms.
“I’m used to having body language and live interaction with students,” she said. “It’s going to be very different doing that through an online discussion and workshops.”
Stephens said she still wants to create a comfortable atmosphere among students.
“I don’t want to be a talking head on a computer screen,” she said. “I want people to be comfortable engaging and learning.”
The two summer classes will serve as trials for future courses, Walther said. She said there are currently no plans for such courses in the Fall, but that they may be considered in the future.
“Duke does not really have a policy about online courses, but it might be time to develop one,” she said.
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