Faculty Stories.

“A much more efficient and focused learning experience”

Daniel Egger, Pratt School of Engineering

“I have come to appreciate how making each step in a process explicit…makes for less wasted time and effort by students and a much more efficient and focused learning experience.”


Daniel Egger, an executive-in-residence in Duke’s Master’s of Engineering Management program, came to Duke after a long career as a software entrepreneur and venture capitalist. In 2016, he started co-teaching a series of online courses on data analytics on Coursera. Egger and co-instructor Jana Schaich Borg quickly realized the high demand for the information they were teaching: in the year after the suite of courses launched, over 300,000 individuals around the world had enrolled, and nearly 19,000 had completed a course.

Now, Egger is using the online course materials to flip his Duke course for students enrolled in Pratt’s on-campus and distance Master of Engineering Management programs. Students watch his video lecture before class, and Egger is able to have students do hands-on work on practical problems related to the material during class time. “This is more interesting for students and for me, and has been very popular so far,” he said.

In addition, Egger says developing courses that are effective in an online environment changed the way he approaches teaching in person. “I have come to appreciate how making each step in a process explicit, and explaining along the way what the specific skills learned will be, makes for less wasted time and effort by students and a much more efficient and focused learning experience.”

Based on “New Models for Teaching Using Coursera Groups” (Duke CIT Blog) and “Online Analytics Course Tackles a Fast-Moving Field” (Duke Today)


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