Seminarium

The Elements of Great Teaching

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Archive as a Context for Teaching the Bible

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Axiomatic in my teaching of the Bible is the notion that all texts are produced in a context.

For most of my beginning students, such a notion poses little threat to their faith convictions. Even the “more controversial” claim of non-Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch wanes in intensity after a few lectures on redaction history.

Their uneasiness, however, lingers not with arguments on a text’s particular historical context but with the claim that all readings of the biblical text are the outcome of historical processes. Said differently, no reading, informed or uninformed, takes place in a social vacuum.

Counteracting Global Ignorance with Synchronous Online Learning

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Bringing web-based technology into the world religions classroom is often destructive. It’s wrong because the web technologies easily foster the worst kinds of tendencies that erode what is good about general education. The adoption of the web into religious studies teaching must adapt the technology towards properly-considered competencies for general education. I will propose and justify one means of doing just that.

ACE Series Part I: Your Students Can ACE Critical Writing

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Yep, we asked for it. The classroom has never been more diverse. Students are coming from both sides of the poverty line, from all walks of life, and from everywhere on the map. Slowly but surely our ivory tower’s doors are widening to more of the world. And we professors have the opportunity of a lifetime. We get to guide students on the path to informed global citizenship, the dream of a university education.

But that also means we can no longer pass the buck. You know what I’m talking about, and you’ve seen what I’ve seen.

Reimagining Nimble Ways of Preparing Persons for Church Leadership—2 of 2

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Let’s clarify the challeges for preparing persons for Church leadership:

The world needs the church to be better at being the church.

Global crises are erupting around issues of poverty, environmental degradation, economic injustice, alienation of persons, refugees and immigration challenges, human trafficking and violence, to name just a few urgent issues. The list is long and complex. The world needs the church to be better at being the church in ways that bear witness to God’s promise for the flourishing of the world.

 

Backwards Course Design in Religious Studies—1 of 2

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As a new teacher in a liberal arts undergraduate college, I had no idea how to plan a religious studies course, except to imitate the text-book dependent plans of my own teachers.

I quickly felt frustrated; no textbooks quite did the trick and my creative innovations felt more like clumsy interruptions.  Understanding by Design, by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, gave me some very useful tips that I now pass onto you, adapted for college-level teaching in religion, biblical studies, and theology.