By advocating a forward-looking vision for education that spans from pre-K through post-retirement, and embracing learners and learning anytime, anywhere, Learning Innovation & Lifetime Education aims to elevate the national and global conversations about innovative and emerging pedagogies. Our goal is not only to raise awareness of new teaching and learning ideas and practices, but also generate ideas and interest for applied research in emerging pedagogies.

SAVE THE DATE: The 2024 Emerging Pedagogies Summit will be held Wednesday, October 9 through Friday, October 11 on Duke’s campus. We are currently assembling the program for this event, so we encourage you to subscribe to our newsletter for updates as we announce topics and speakers over the coming months.

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Spring 2024 Webinar Series: Imagining the Innovative University of the Future

Institutions of higher education are facing numerous stressors and challenges in an evolving landscape of learner and employer needs. Newly established universities and colleges may have certain advantages to well-established institutions, in that they can focus their programs, curricula and pedagogies on what learners need now and will need in the future. How can established and respected institutions such as Duke evolve and innovate based on strong foundations, to expand their quality offerings to reach new audiences of learners, teach new skills and capabilities, and develop new ways of recognizing and tracking learner accomplishment? 

This webinar series will highlight some of the ways that innovation can and is happening in higher ed — at the university scale (macro innovation), program scale (mezzo innovation), and individual course scale (micro innovation). 

Please join us for one or all of the events in the series.

New Universities of the 21st Century

Friday April 5, 12- 1 PM EDT

Duke Associate Provost Noah Pickus and guests Sanjay Sarma and Bryan Penprase will discuss innovative new universities of the 21^st century around the world. The discussion will explore themes highlighted in Pickus’ and Bryan Penprase’s new book, “The New Global Universities: Reinventing Education in the 21st Century and how higher education can set new standards for teaching and learning and nurture a new generation of leaders. The session will end with commentary by Yakut Gazi.

Alternative Credentials and Modularity as Innovative Learning Pathways

Friday April 12, 12-1 PM EDT

Join us for a conversation about the future of alternative credentials with Noah Geisel, Micro-Credentials Program Manager in the Office of the Registrar, University of Colorado Boulder and Duke alumnus, and Hilary Culbertson, Senior Director of Communications and Marketing, Duke LILE.

Alternative credentials (AC) which are high-quality, portable, and recognizable inside and outside of an institution of higher learning can make visible the discrete skills, knowledge, and mindsets acquired by learners. The ability ACs provide to deconstruct and name not only large areas of content knowledge but also the more elusive yet highly sought after “soft” or “human” skills is a boon to students and employers alike. Pedagogically, ACs offer an opportunity for faculty to think deeply and creatively about learning outcomes across projects and assignments rather than entire semesters only, even integrating experiential learning that occurs beyond classroom walls. Further, due to their modular nature, the stackability of ACs can illustrate for students numerous learning pathways to achieving a specific goal, certificate, or even degree. Whether by providing on-ramps to courses or certificates, allowing non-graduating students to demonstrate–and eventually complete–their learning, or providing learner voice and choice, ACs are harbingers of a more equitable, student-centered, and creative way to assess and credential learning.

Applied Research and Classroom-Based Innovation

Friday April 19, 12-1 PM EDT

Teaching practice, just as any other scholarly activity, is an area about which you can form questions and hypotheses, gather data, and iterate based on the results of your study. Many faculty at Duke engage in applied educational research or scholarship of teaching and learning in which they routinely explore questions about teaching and/or student learning, innovate their own practice based on what they learn, and disseminate their results to grow the body of knowledge around teaching and learning best practices. This webinar will feature faculty in different disciplines providing brief 10-minute overviews of their recent research and course-level innovations: Joan Clifford, Robert Duvall and Aaron Kyle.

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Past Emerging Pedagogies Activities

Call for Proposals: Seed Grants and Faculty Fellows

The Office of the Vice Provost for Learning Innovation and Digital Education is pleased to support Duke faculty engaging in applied research and knowledge building around emerging pedagogies with seed grants and professional learning communities led by Faculty Fellows up to $10,000 each. **The call for proposals is now closed. Applicants will be notified by March 8, 2024 if their proposals have been accepted.**

The 2023 Emerging Pedagogies Summit

October 4 – 6, 2023

The Summit was an opportunity to create a hub of applied research activities and innovative practices around topics which are spurring important conversations in teaching and learning right now.

Emerging Pedagogies Symposium: Teaching and Learning in the Age of AI

April 24, 2023

We invited the Duke community to join us a discussion of the impacts, opportunities and challenges of AI in the realm of teaching, learning and educational research. The Symposium featured a keynote by Dr. Ashok Goel, Professor of Computer Science and Human-Centered Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology, and a fireside chat with Dr. Goel, Matt Hirschey (Director of the Center for Computational Thinking at Duke), and Yakut Gazi (Vice Provost for Learning Innovation and Digital Education).