In partnership with the Office of Information Technology, we are pleased to announce that Duke University and Duke Kunshan University will transition from Sakai to the Canvas platform during the 2023 - 2024 academic year.

No action is needed at this time and no Spring 2023 courses will be affected. If you are scheduled to teach in Fall 2023 and are interested in being an early adopter of Canvas, please fill out this short interest form.

Canvas is the leading LMS platform in higher education and has already been successfully adopted by programs at Duke and by many of Duke’s peer institutions. Transitioning to a new platform with an expanded array of learning experiences will have a positive institutional and systemic impact on the teaching and learning environment at Duke. 

Additional information about this transition, including a timeline and answers to frequently asked questions, is available at the Duke LMS Transition website. We will also send email updates throughout the transition to keep the Duke community informed of important dates and resources. 

We are devoting a significant amount of support to transitioning course sites and training to minimize the impact on instructors. If you have any questions or concerns, you may email the project team at lmstransition@duke.edu. 

8 pm EST on Thursday, December 8

All faculty, students and staff are invited to attend Duke Kunshan University's Center for Teaching and Learning's Annual Teaching and Learning Showcase to celebrate, reflect and envision the future of teaching and learning. This year's theme is Learning Community Across Boundaries, and the event will be keynoted by Yakut Gazi, Duke's Vice Provost for Learning Innovation and Digital Education. 

Brooks Frederickson is a current Fellow teaching a new course this fall titled "Laptop Ensemble." (MUS 211-18) This ensemble focuses on creating, writing, improvising and interpreting music with laptops, tablets and phones. Learn more about this unique course in Duke Today.

Former Fellow Prajakta Prabhune created the aiM YouTube channel, a platform for AI for Understanding and Designing Materials (aiM) trainees and affiliate members to present their work in short-form videos. Read the aiM news release to learn more.

We will not offer office hours during the week of December 26-30. As a reminder, Learning Innovation staff are available via Zoom for open office hours every Monday from 1 to 3 pm and every Thursday from 10 am to noon Eastern.

Thursday, Dec. 8 at 2 pm EST

In this session Gradescope representatives will introduce attendees to the exams assignment type in Gradescope and offer guidance and best practices to make your exam grading faster and more consistent. Register Now

Deadline: January 6, 2023

The Provost’s Office is once again offering support to Duke faculty who are interested in convening a group of colleagues to begin or test a new collaboration around a shared intellectual interest.  

Project funds ranging from $1,000 to $5,000 will be awarded for use during the 2023 calendar year. Recipients can use funds to cover the cost of meeting venues, external speakers, event materials, books or other meeting costs, and/or exploratory research (as by a student research assistant) into potential collaborators at Duke, UNC, NC State, NCCU, RTI, local organizations, etc.

Please see the RFP for details and contact Mindy Miller or Ed Balleisen with questions about the program or process. Formstack submission portal questions should be directed to the Office of Interdisciplinary Studies.

Opened and newly renovated last May, the Bryan Center Studios (BCS) is open to the Duke community every day of the week to produce videos and audio recordings with professional-level equipment in studios designated for specific services. Learn more about how you and your students can take advantage of this state-of-the-art media center.

A monthly series highlighting simple steps you can take to improve accessibility in your class.

Captioning on videos and slides is helpful for many learners. Captions help overcome difficulties due to hearing loss and also help mitigate poor sound quality. Students who want to review content in recordings and non-native English speakers find them valuable as well.

Duke’s video services, Zoom and Panopto, can create AI-generated captions and transcripts. To provide captions in Zoom, you’ll need to enable the feature for your account and start it in your meetings. Auto-generated transcripts also appear in any recorded Zoom session. In Panopto, after your recording processes captions and a transcript will auto generate. It is also possible to enable captions when presenting in Google Slides and PowerPoint. 

Please note: machine-generated captions aren’t perfect and there are many variables that can affect the quality. If you are using a recording repeatedly, we suggest editing the captions. If a person in your course or public event has a documented condition that requires captioning, you can work with the Disability Management System to arrange for human-generated captioning of your public workshops or get more help creating web accessible items with captioning.

Day in the Life: Seth Anderson, Teaching Consultant

Encouraging Student Creativity

What We Read in November 2022