The Arts and Sciences Council ended the last academic year with an intense conversation on online education, and it'll pick up the discussion again this fall with a series of surveys, forums and other means to gather faculty opinion.
The initiative comes on the heels of the council this past April rejecting a proposed joint venture with Semester Online, a for-profit company that provides a platform for online courses. At the same meeting, the council voted to renew Duke's commitment to the "current practice of exploring and adopting a variety of online platforms."
At the opening meeting of the Arts and Sciences Council, Chair Thomas Robisheaux announced the new initiative. Education Professor David Malone, a member of the council's executive committee (ECASC) said the council's curriculum and course committees will lead the effort along with ECASC and Associate Dean Inge Walther.
The curriculum and courses committees are charged with addressing some of the policy concerns that faculty raised back in April and looking at policy issues such as criteria of credit for online courses, approval procedures for these courses and number of online courses a student can count toward graduation requirements. But Malone said the overall effort also will explore broader issues of how these online experiences can affect classroom learning.
Malone said the first faculty forum will be held Sept. 27, led by Denise Comer, Orin Starn and Ronen Plesser, three arts and sciences faculty members who will discuss their experiences in teaching online courses. The forum will be held at 10 a.m. in 217 Perkins Library.
At the same time, ECASC is asking departments to respond to surveys on faculty interest and thoughts about the future of online learning, Malone said. In addition, information will be collected from peer institutions about their online learning experiences.
According to Malone, ECASC also recommends that Trinity College offer mini-grants to faculty members interested in incorporating online learning in their courses.
"We need council representatives to survey their departments," Malone said. "We need to hear from faculty about what they want and need to make this happen at the highest level of quality."
At the university level, the Advisory Committee for Online Education, co-chaired by Professor Scott Huettel, will also look at a variety of online education issues this semester.
Speaking at the Arts and Sciences Council meeting, Trinity College Dean Laurie Patton said she wanted the year to be one of "intense exploration" on online education, involving not just faculty and administrators but also students.
"I am concerned that we remain engaged as a whole faculty on this issue, even though we may disagree and have different perspectives on the value of the large varieties of online education that are out there and that exist in Arts & Sciences at Duke," Patton said.
"Those who are critical need to hear from those who are supportive, and those who are supportive need to hear from those who are critical. This is what we should be doing as an intellectual community. Engage with each other, and not split off from each other."