Course materials
Many Duke faculty use Blackboard @ Duke to provide student access to course materials. Blackboard course sites are automatically created for most Duke courses each term, and students who are enrolled in the course are given access to the respective Blackboard sites.
However, if your course materials consist heavily of online non-Duke resources such as RSS feeds, blog posts, flickr slideshows, YouTube videos and similar materials, and you are comfortable using a non-Duke-supported tool, you may also want to try a more flexible type of course website such as Ning, a blog, or a wiki. Keep in mind that there are student privacy considerations when using these sites; CIT can help you plan if you are interested in trying these.
Once you have determined your course goals or student learning outcomes, and have begun to think about the design and content of your course, you will consider appropriate course materials. The key is to target the materials students need to review or read to specific course goals, rather than designing the course around a group of materials or a textbook which "needs to be covered."
Textbooks
- Many faculty use a hard copy textbook, or parts of one (these can be ordered through the Duke Book Store, or from Amazon or other online vendors).
- Some use online textbooks or e-textbooks of various sorts (see open source course content site Connexions, for example).
- Some compile relevant course materials from various sorts and create a course pack.
- Some use mainly links to online materials of various kinds, including online journal articles, websites, or multimedia resources.
- Articles placed on "e-reserves" in the library will be digitized and made available through your Blackboard course site or directly on the library's web site.
Resources for finding relevant e-materials and media
- Duke librarians can help search Duke's many licensed databases for relevant journal articles or books for your class (librarians can also come to your class and conduct a workshop for students about how to do research in Duke's libraries).
- Searches of scholarly repositories such as Google Scholar may locate useful materials.
- Appropriate (as well as inappropriate!) media can be found on YouTube, flickr and other online sites (on flickr be sure to limit your search to Creative Commons licensed images).
- Duke University Libraries subscribes to many image resources of which many faculty are unaware. Contact the Art librarian Lee Sorensen for more information about what's available.
- Google searches may locate relevant websites, blog posts, and other more "informal"sources.
Creating course materials
- Video and audio recording equipment and tools are available through the Duke Digital Initiative in the Link, and CIT can help you learn how best to use these to create materials for your course. Examples are recorded "lecturettes" of 2-10 min., annotated media presentations, podcasts, image slide shows, and more.
- If you have existing non-digital materials, CIT may be able to help digitize them via our Materials Development program.
