House Courses

New Intent to Teach a House Course form for Spring 2025 available

If you are an instructor planning to teach a House course for the first time in Spring 2025 , the Intent to Teach form is the new first step. Please visit our How to Apply to Teach a House Course section below. After completing this form, you will receive a personalized link to the full application. This will allow you to complete the application in several stages without having to restart the process from the beginning.

House Course Instructor Requirements

If you are a new instructor planning to teach a House course for the first time in Spring 2025 , you must register in Fall 2024 for ARTS&SCI 102, Introduction to College Teaching. This is a 0.5 credit course taken on an S/U basis that will guide you through the process of writing your syllabus, designing course activities, creating application materials in advance of the deadline, and developing teaching skills related to management of your classroom, including how to foster active learning, respond to microaggressions, avoid bias, and provide meaningful feedback on assignments. This course is open to anyone who would like to take it, including experienced House course instructors, though they are not required to do so. Once you've taken the course, you remain qualified to teach a House course for the remainder of your time at Duke.

For more information, please contact Angel Martinez at courserequests@duke.edu .

House Course Submission Schedule for Spring 2025 offerings

Applications are live as of August 26, 2024. Please note that:

• Applications that are complete and received by the priority deadline are guaranteed to appear in DukeHub by the time shopping carts open. Meeting the priority deadline ensures that your course has adequate time for review and revisions if requested. However, we will work with all applications received by the final deadline (regardless of revisions necessary) to get them posted in a timely way.
• Those received by the second deadline should be available by the time registration opens.
• Applications that are incomplete or do not meet guidelines may be delayed in posting to DukeHub, jeopardizing enrollment

• Applications that are complete and submitted by the deadline will have their course published in DukeHub by the time shopping carts open.
• Applications that are incomplete or don’t meet the guidelines may be delayed in posting to DukeHub, jeopardizing enrollment.

What Are House Courses?

House Courses provide an intellectual experience that is not available in regular course offerings. Such courses are developed in response to student interests and concerns and serve as a bridge between the academic and residential life of students. They enhance intellectual life in the residence halls where they are taught, hence the name "House Course." These courses are open to all undergraduates.

House Courses carry 0.5 semester course credit and are offered only on a satisfactory/unsatisfactory grading basis. These courses meet at least 12 times for a minimum of 18 hours. House Courses do not carry any curriculum codes and do not satisfy Small Group Learning requirements. Up to four House Courses may count toward graduation.

Who Teaches House Courses?

In order to give current undergraduates an opportunity to develop their own ideas and skills, House Courses may be taught by current Duke undergraduates, who must be supervised by a member of the Trinity College faculty teaching on campus in the semester during which the course is offered. Undergraduate student instructors of House Courses do not receive course credit for teaching and may not enroll in their own courses. House Courses may also be taught by faculty in a recognized school, department, or academic program at Duke.

All courses must be approved and sponsored by a Trinity College Arts and Sciences department AND approved by the Committee on Courses. House Courses are free-standing courses of 18 or fewer students. The course may not require for a grade any other curricular or extra-curricular activity or enterprise, nor participation in activities beyond those of the course itself. House Courses are not skills courses or required training for subsequent courses or activities. House Courses do not have prerequisites, corequisites, or required permission. Enrollment in House Courses is open and cannot be limited by anything but the size of the course. Nevertheless, enrollment priority may sometimes be given for those living in the House where the House Course is taught.

If you are interested in organizing and teaching a House Course, please visit our How to Apply to Teach a House Course section below. You'll find our application form, instructions for filling it out, a waiver of liability template form for any fieldtrips you may want to offer as part of the course, a syllabus template, instructions for reserving a residence hall room for your course if necessary, and more.

Please note changes in the application process outlined below:

Application Requirements & Process

Applications are live as of the first day of classes, August 26, 2024.

Step 1: Complete the Intent to Teach form

Step 2: Complete House Course application using the personalized link sent to you in the email you provided:

The personalized link will allow you to go back to the application several times without having to restart it. Click the link emailed to you to return to your application.

A complete application has FIVE elements:

1. Current resume for each instructor.
2. Complete syllabus.This is the most important part of your application. Please review the Syllabi Requirements tab in the following section for information on what to include on your syllabus. If your syllabus doesn’t meet the requirements, you’ll be asked to revise. This will delay the publication of your course in DukeHub.
3. One letter of recommendation from the Course's faculty sponsor. If multiple instructors are applying to teach, the sponsor should submit a combined recommendation letter. Letters of recommendation can be emailed to courserequests@duke.edu . Applicants who have taught their House Course before do not need to submit new letters of recommendation.
4. Completed signature sheet (see link below) with signatures of student instructors, faculty sponsor, as well as the DUS and Chair of the faculty sponsor's department. This page is generated at the end of the application and is also linked below.

1. Customized Field Trip Waiver of Liability form and field trip information (if applicable). If there is travel for the course, instructors must contact Corporate Risk Management at corprisk@duke.edu and submit a Waiver of Liability form to them for approval well in advance of field trips. A sample Field Trip Waiver of Liability Form is provided above for reference. An approved Waiver of Liability form must be completed for Durham field trips for which group transportation is provided for students and for any field trips to locations beyond Durham. Please customize the template according to the needs of the course and then submit to Corporate Risk Management for approval. Field trips must be optional and may not require any additional payment.

You can submit this documents in several stages by going back and clicking the personalized link emailed to you."

Students are highly encouraged to review all application reference materials and the House Course Policies tab before beginning the Qualtrics submissions form, as incomplete applications may delay approval and publication in DukeHub. Applicants can find a preview of the application form in the reference materials listed below.

Required Instructor Training:

All new House course instructors are required to enroll in ARTS&SCI 102, Introduction to College Teaching, prior to teaching their course. This 0.5 credit course, taken on an S/U basis, will be offered for the first time in Fall 2024.

In addition, all instructors, including returning instructors, must complete Coursera TA modules (see below for instructions), verified by uploading your Coursera completion certificate as part of the application.

Duke Coursera TA modules include 5 units:

• FERPA: Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act
• DukeReach: Supporting Students in Distress
• Title IX Sexual Misconduct: Reporting is Supporting
• Students Disability Access Office: A One-Stop Shop for Accessibility Needs
• Promoting Academic Integrity: The Duke Community Standard in Action

To access the modules, follow these steps:

1. Go to: https://www.coursera.org/programs/duke-university-courses-gp9dy?authProvider=duke
2. Click "Join for Free" and then "Log in with Duke University."
3. Log in with your NetID.
4. Enter this URL https://www.coursera.org/learn/duke-ta-training/home/welcome or search "Duke TA Training", then choose "Enroll for Free."
5. Watch all five modules, then complete the quiz.
6. After successfully passing the final evaluation of the course, you’ll receive a certificate of completion. Download this and hold onto it. You will need it to upload as part of your application to teach a House course once applications formally open on the first day of classes.

Syllabi and Academic Rigor

The Courses Committee expects that House Course subjects will be treated in a critical, evaluative, historical, and/or analytical way, and that House Courses will not primarily teach skills. Instructors should work with their faculty sponsors to create House Course syllabi. Once the House Course is approved, the syllabus may not be changed without permission of the Courses Committee. If the Courses Committee required syllabus revisions, the final syllabus must be emailed (in Word document format) to courserequests@duke.edu.

The syllabus must include the following information. Any syllabus missing one or more of the requirements will be returned to the applicant for revision, delaying its approval and publication in DukeHub.

Course Information

• Student instructor(s) and faculty sponsor names and contact information
• Brief description of course
• Student learning outcomes
• Schedule of course meetings, with dates – a minimum of twelve course meetings is required
• Attendance policy that requires students to attend at least eleven class sessions to earn credit
• Identification of dates of classes the faculty sponsor will attend throughout semester (two classes minimum), the first of which must occur during the first three weeks of the semester
• If bringing in guest speakers, outside speaker names and credentials
• Basis for grading statement: A grade of satisfactory in this course requires satisfactory completion of all assignments of this course including written and oral assignments, attendance, and [whatever individual other exercises an individual House Course may require]”

Assignments

• Description of each class session (topics to be covered and activities)
• Weekly Assignments: Total number of pages of reading, minutes of video, or estimated time to complete assigned homework each week. Please note that Duke’s accreditation agency specifies that to earn academic credit, a student must complete a minimum of four hours of work outside of class per week. This can average out over the course of a semester by including time spent on papers and projects
• Page references for all required readings for each class meeting
• Final Assignment: Requirement of one or more rigorous academic products appropriate to the course material, as assessed by the Courses Committee. Examples of this include a traditional academic paper; a video or slide presentation; a set of lesson plans; a fiction or journalistic assignment; or a pitch, app, or program (supplemented by written materials). This is not an exhaustive list, but the assignment should be a serious analytical assignment for which directions/topics are provided that are directly relevant to the course readings or research. Not satisfying this requirement are “reaction,” “response,” or “reflective” papers or journals. It should be equivalent in scale to a 1500-word paper
• Prompts for all required written assignments.