Duke's role in a consortium of universities offering for-credit online courses promises students greater access to interesting classes and teachers and promotes teaching innovations that could spread to on-campus classrooms.
But the speed in which Duke is moving into the online education world, plus concerns about the affect on classroom enrollments, particularly for small departments, has some Arts and Sciences faculty members calling for the university to slow down and even withdraw from the consortium.
The Arts and Sciences Faculty Council spent more than 90 minutes debating the issue Thursday. No vote was taken, and the debate will continue at the council's April 25 meeting.
Duke is one of about a dozen colleges and universities contributing online courses to "Semester Online," a venture that will allow students from the partner institutions to enroll and earn credit from any courses within the group. Others in the consortium included Northwestern, Notre Dame, Emory, Brandeis and Washington University in St. Louis.
Under the proposal, Duke would enter the consortium for five years, with a review after three.
The venture is supported by 2U, an online education company that will provide coordination and the technical infrastructure. It is one of several new initiatives Duke is experimenting with to leverage technology to broaden its academic reach.
Semester Online is not a "MOOC" -- or "massive open online course" -- where enrollment runs to the tens of thousands, the cost is free and no credit is offered. With Semester Online, students pay for the courses and receive credit from their own college or university regardless of who is teaching the online course. Semester Online courses will be capped at 300 students, with individual sections limited to no more than 20.
Provost Peter Lange told faculty Thursday Semester Online would allow Duke faculty to teach in "new and more engaging ways."
Lange said it would allow Duke students to take a wider range of courses, particularly in the summer when most students aren’t on campus. At the same time, it extends the faculty’s ability to reach a greater number of students. It is expected to bring in revenue, but Lange said the amount is not much and it isn't the primary driver of the initiative.
"None of the institutions [in the consortium] can deliver the diversity of curriculum that the students have the right to ask for," Lange said. "This is an opportunity to thicken up the curriculum through additional courses."
Duke went with 2U because of the company's past successful experience with online master's degree and professional courses and because of the strong collection of peer institutions in the consortium.
The 2U agreement has been approved by the executive councils of both the Academic Council and the Arts and Sciences Faculty Council and has been reviewed by Arts and Sciences curriculum advisory committees, which made some changes in policies designed to protect and limit the number of online credits a Duke student could take. Professors David Bell, chair of the A&S Advisory Committee on Online Courses; Susan Wynn, co-chair of the A&S Course Committee, and Charles Becker of the council's executive committee, spoke of their work on the plan and support for it.
But many faculty felt they were coming late to the discussion and raised questions about the proposal.
"I believe in creative pedagogy, But 2U seems regressive," said History professor Jocelyn Olcott, the department's director of undergraduate studies. "Duke faculty are already 'flipping the classroom with support from CIT [Center for Instructional Technology]. I'd like to see more evidence of how 2U can help. I see this as being less creative than what we do already in the classroom. We're open to the possibility of online education, but there are serious risks to being an early adopter, and I would like to see the proposal tabled."
Olcott said her department wants assurance that courses wouldn't be available to Duke students without approval from the department. She noted that of the 12 courses currently being advertised on the Semester Online website, four were history courses and three had significant overlap with courses now being taught at Duke. A fourth history course, on "Baseball and American Culture" will be taught by an English professor at Emory.
The concern about overlap with current courses was voiced most strongly by small departments. Professor of Classical Studies Tolly Boatwright said her department can offer some courses only once every six semesters. Saying that an online course could pull away both majors and non-majors from department enrollment, she said, "The logistics of thinking who will offer what seems to be a nightmare."
However, faculty who had experience with online courses said some of the concerns were misplaced. Biology professor Mohamed Noor talked about how he incorporated lessons from a MOOC course into his Duke classroom and added that prospective students he met recently during Blue Devil Days had classroom technology very much on their minds. "These kinds of classes are being met with interest by students," Noor said. "We can put it off, but at least in my department, we do so to our detriment."
Philosophy professor Walter Sinnott-Armstrong added that online enrollment is not a zero-sum game. If large numbers of students take Duke classical studies classes online, it's going to be a good thing for the department, he said.
"It might pull students into the field,” he said. “Some might fall in love with classical studies from these courses and end up taking more at Duke."
While some faculty members are just recently learning about the details of the plan, these were not new discussions. In framing Duke's role in the 2U consortium, faculty committees had asked the same questions about who determined whether particular online courses would receive Duke credit or would count toward major graduation requirements.
The policy attempts to protect departments on several fronts. For one, no course could count toward the major requirements of a department without prior approval of the department's director of undergraduate studies.
Similarly, the policy states that no class would be offered for Duke credit without prior approval from the Arts and Sciences course committee "in consultation with the department."
Lange said the discussion had provided him with a greater awareness of the concerns of small departments, but he urged those departments to explore the opportunities 2U offers.
"If we are saying to our students that the only opportunity you will get to take a course was once over three years, and if you can't take it then too bad, we're impeding access to our students," he said. "I understand the concerns better now, but we have to recognize the trade-offs."
Eric Ferreri of the Office of News and Communication contributed to this story.