Course is an online learning platform that offers courses and learning opportunities for businesses and universities. Racera for Duke Master available to more than 4,000 of these courses with 120 universities, including Duke, all Duke staff, teachers and students at no cost. Learners can acquire a new competence, explore a new subject or advance their career objectives at their own pace.
A pandemic expansion
The course offers and the university partners have developed in recent years, according to Quentin Ruiz-Esparza, director of strategy and design of digital products that oversee the racera program at Duke.
Pré-Pandemic, Racera at Duke was limited to the courses developed by Duke Instructions, of which about 65 years ago. But when the world has moved more online after 2020, RuiZ-Esparza said that Duke had become a part of Racera Partners Consortium, a partnership of other universities and educational organizations.
Among the expanded offers, Duke instructors now offer on 120 courses, Ruiz-Eparza said. And many departments and units use the tool for training and specialization education.
“Racera is increasingly part of the strategy of Duke Professional Schools and Academic Units,” said Ruiz-Esparza. “The online course platform offers affordable and flexible large-scale learning that helps Duke achieve its objectives for professional learning and throughout life.”
Racera for career development
IT and data science courses are among some of the most popular subjects. The sampling of the most popular courses among Duke's learners includes: Stress SEADS for health workers, introduction to probability and data with R, Cloud Computing, programming for everyone and medical neuroscience.
But there are also fun lessons. Ruiz-Esparza said that one of the most popular courses offered to Duke is the emotion and cognition of dogs, taught by Duke Canine cognition center‘S Brian Hare.
Dean Hawkins took courses racing since he started working at Duke three years ago because he was interested in knowing more about Python, a computer programming language.
“I have no computer training,” said Hawkins. “I just think that the computers are a little treated, and I wanted to learn a program – and Python is a good way to start. So, I did it for fun and I realized that I really enjoyed it, and I thought I was good to learn it.”
He said he could go through a long lesson about three to four months. His dedication resulted in 139 hours of total learning on 13 unique courses – which are the highest current totals among Duke's active learners.
Python's learning has played a decisive role in the career development of Hawkins. Hawkins recently started a position as a senior program coordinator at the Nicholas School of the Environment, a job that he found attractive because it is a question of creating data projects – and using his new computer programming skills.
“It is not the same as a diploma, but it communicates to future employers that you have of initiative, that you are ingenious and that you can find answers yourself,” said Hawkins. “It's a good professional development thing you could do if you have time.”
How to register for Racera
Connect https://online.duke.edu/coursera-for-duke/.
Use your Netid to log in, then click “Register” for one of the 4,000 courses or specializations in the catalog.
All Duke Racera courses are asynchronous (which means they can be completed at any time).
Although courses and race will not apply to a diploma, many offer a certificate that can illustrate competence in a subject or skills and presented on CVs and LinkedIn profiles.
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