Over the past year, Duke University faculty, staff, and executive leadership were
compelled to make a host of critical decisions related to the opportunities and
challenges posed by the current wave of massive open online courses (MOOCs). The
lack of available empirical research regarding MOOCs played a significant role in that
decision-making process. In this position paper, the author examines the types of
choices that universities are confronted with as they wrestle with their own identities in
the face of new and disruptive forces. The author also describes the special effort being
made by Duke to collect and analyze data with a view toward advancing the
assessment of online education more broadly. She shares and discusses the
University's preliminary findings with regard to instructor workload as well as student
demographics, motivations, and levels of engagement, all based on data derived from
the University's first MOOC. Finally, readers are provided with a summary of the types
of decisions that administrators, faculty, and staff are likely to face in crafting an
institutional response to the brave new world of online education and MOOCs.

Keywords

engaging teaching strategies · jigsaw groups · online teaching · problem-based learning · sociology · soil science