Resisting Disembodiment – Distributed Learning is Not Distance EducationPosted on December 27, 2013 by Ryan TormaWhen I first started working in online seminary education, my boss explained to me, ‘We don’t do distance education, we do distributed learning.’ Working with her and many other wise leaders, I came to understand what they meant. Distance education implies a learned center from which education radiates out. Online learning technologies allow education to be delivered to people who are distant from that center, but they are distant nonetheless.Distributed learning is something different….
Performance and the Classroom: Part 1—My First (Misconceived) EffortPosted on December 24, 2013 by David RhoadsI got the idea to incorporate performance into the classroom from the choir director at Carthage College. I went to the annual concert of the choir, a magnificent Christmas concert held each year in December. The concert was repeated several times on the weekend and drew thousands of people from the college and from the area.As always, I was awed by the quality of the student performances….
Teaching the Bible in Texas: An Archive Possessed?Posted on December 19, 2013 by Gregory CuéllarThree things are sacred in Texas, its history, the Bible, and football. Here the Alamo is a pilgrimage site, and High school football is almost equal in importance to Sunday church attendance.This past summer, I integrated Texas History and the Bible in a dream elective course titled, “A Borderlands Reading of Deuteronomistic History.” Central to the course was a reading of Joshua to 2 Kings side by side with Texas borderlands history from the late nineteenth century through the early decades of the twentieth century. The primary topics of discussion were the intersecting themes of empire, conquest, exile, family, gender, and violence….
Sound Bites from the PastPosted on December 13, 2013 by Jim PapandreaWhen I was a student, the way many professors taught Church History was through readers—a published book of excerpts from the primary sources. These books were assigned, and students were to read the relevant excerpts as preparation for lectures on the various time periods, controversies, and patristic writers. When I became the professor, I simply followed the lead of my own teachers, without really considering whether there was another way to do it. . . .
The Instructor’s Double StandardPosted on December 9, 2013 by A+ Brooke Lester, CuratorTeachers have a lot of power over students in the classroom. Typically, we write the syllabus, decide the rules, make rulings on infractions. In turn, we are accountable to our institutions, as instructors and also regarding our many non-teaching obligations. In conversations, I frequently brush up against the reality of The Instructor’s Double Standard, here defined as any instance when an instructor holds students to a standard to which she does not hold herself, or to which she is not held by the institution…