Effective Social Learning for a Post-MOOC EraPosted on January 28, 2015 by Nathan LoewenOur institutions and students are as post-MOOC as they are post-modern. Our world is international, practically-focused and communications-driven. Our students need to learn how to collaborate with partners from around the world in order to create local solutions. Smaller institutions should focus on their strengths of increased internationalization, emerging in-class pedagogies and diffusion of new media technologies. In order to do this, I propose a networked pedagogy that builds on three pillars of effective social learning….
Learning Involves Moving and Being Moved—Part 2: Six Strategies of an Invitational PedagogyPosted on January 19, 2015 by Mindy McGarrah SharpPhenomenologists and narrative theorists note the importance of a horizon to learning – a not yet that beckons engaged, creative, responsible movement. Self-psychologist Heinz Kohut insists on “postponing closures” when interpreting any life experience, one’s own or on behalf of another person.Learning has more room to move and breathe when a learning process yields to an open future, leaving room to move discourses, interpretations, theological claims, and processes of becoming into a life’s vocation…
Before I Take My Classes Online (2 of 3)Posted on January 14, 2015 by A+ Brooke Lester, CuratorFor the face-to-face teacher and learner, entering the online teaching environment is a cross-cultural experience. It’s natural to try to hold on to the familiar, even when aware that this can interfere with a genuinely immersive, transformative experience of an unfamiliar environment. Find your points of discomfort, and ask questions (like those in this blog series) of instructors who already teach online.“But Commmuuunniiittyyy!”“‘Community’ only happens face to face, because of embodiment, and the incarnation.”I don’t know what the secular, non-seminary parallels to this objection are, but I’m sure they exist. But this is how it finds expression in a seminary. I’m going to hit this one pretty hard…
Learning Involves Moving and Being Moved—Part 1: Hinge MomentsPosted on January 12, 2015 by Mindy McGarrah SharpHinge moments often evoke dislocation, opening certainties and unfolding more multidimensional possibilities to what appeared to be smoothed out maps. For theological educators trained to map a place in a field, carve out a scholarship domain, advance a particular line of thought, maps and map-making are key vocational tools to meet the dislocations that new questions of hinge moments propose….
Strange/Familiar/StrangePosted on January 7, 2015 by Kristin Johnston Largen<b>“Strange/Familiar/Strange.”/<b>I got this metaphor from my friend Richard Payne, professor and Dean of the Institute for Buddhist Studies out in Berkeley, California. This is the way he has described the process of coming to understand a different culture and/or religion, and I have been thinking about it a lot since I read it. As you might imagine, the point of this language is to indicate that often, when we are introduced to another religious tradition, it is “strange” to us. Typically, the belief system is very different, with different starting presuppositions than what are found in Christianity, and even different core commitments and values. In addition, of course, many practices are “strange”—devotional practices, rites of passage, rituals and holy days, etc…