Faculty have created more than 100 course websites this fall as part of Duke WordPress, a new web-publishing service that will be open to all members of the Duke community this spring.
A Duke-hosted version of the popular web-publishing platform WordPress, Duke WordPress (http://sites.duke.edu/) grew out of a pilot last year through the Duke Digital Initiative. More than 880 faculty, staff and students used WordPress to create course sites, blogs, student website projects and research group sites.
So far this semester, faculty have built sites for courses ranging from environmental science and nursing to dance, writing and foreign language.
"There's really been an increased interest in sharing what goes on in the classroom with the world outside Duke," said Amy Hendrix, a consultant with the Center for Instructional Technology who worked on the pilot. "And these tools really provide students with necessary skills for success in the 21st century: learning how to communicate effectively on the web, using multimedia and engaging with an audience."
Students in Christine Erlien's writing classes used a course blog to share ideas about how instructors could use Google Earth in teaching, as well as to educate others about the organizations behind specific "layers" in Google Earth. Students contacted the sponsoring organizations for feedback.
"Students were really excited about having the opportunity to put their work out there," said Erlien, a lecturing fellow in the Thompson Writing Program. "Not only did they feel good that their work had been read (by an outside audience), but they also got good feedback that encouraged them to revise their work."
Students in Lisa Merschel's intermediate Spanish classes created online multimedia sites as their applications to programs in DukeEngage, which connects undergraduates with immersive service projects.
The platform offers new potential for linking and showcasing a student's work across different courses, Merschel said.
"WordPress is used in a lot of settings outside of academia, so students feel like they're working with a real site," she said. "It has a dynamic look and feel and gives users many tools for design and content management."
This spring, WordPress will be available as a free campus-wide service for the Duke community, with a standard toolkit of themes, plug-ins and configuration options.
"We put the toolkit together based on what we learned during the pilot - it's pretty robust and should provide a lot of options for most users," said Samantha Earp, director of academic services for Duke's Office of Information Technology.
Faculty, students and staff can find more information on the Duke WordPress website (http://sites.duke.edu), including WordPress basics and instructions for creating new course sites.
A Learn IT @ Lunch session, "Duke WordPress: Flexible web publishing in the classroom and beyond," will be held Sept. 15 from noon to 1 p.m. Visit the OIT website for details.