Before I Take My Classes Online (2 of 3)

In this three-part series, drawn from Chapter Four of Understanding Bible by Design  (Fortress, 2014), I address three questions commonly asked by face-to-face instructors who are considering–or who have been asked to consider–their first online course.

In a previous post, I addressed the response,

“Can I Do [Insert Your Favorite Activity Here] Online?”

For 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, because I think there is a whole pack of wolves in this sheep’s clothing.

First, assuming that the objector is a teacher, I would ask her: “In your own classroom, how would you approach a student who seeks to preemptively shut down an area of inquiry with a thought-terminating cliché?” (Maybe you can find a way to ask this that is less pugnacious and alienating—for tactical reasons, not because I think the objection warrants kid gloves.) Declarations about the impossibility of online community do not reflect genuine inquiry. How might this thought-terminating cliché be recast as a good-faith question?

Second, assuming that the objector holds a terminal degree in her field of study, I would ask: “What study have you undertaken? What is your body of evidence, and what warrants to you offer for your interpretation of that evidence? Where are the key terms defined?” If the issue of “community” has been raised as a genuine question—and not simply as a kind of theological nuclear option—then the matter warrants inquiry worthy of an interrogator holding a research degree.

Kinds of [Online] Community

For my own part, I have found it helpful to take at least an elementary-level sociological approach to the question of “community” in learning. First, what kinds of “community” are there; and second, what are the elements that constitute “community”?

When we are not intoning “community” in hushed tones as some kind of elusive chimera, we take for granted that there are at least three kinds of community. There are, of course, geographic communities, living more or less in some contiguous area. There are also “communities of interest”; examples include the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature; the Audubon Society and United States Chess Federation; Star Trek fans and the attendees of Comic Con. Finally, there are what the Infed page, linked also above, calls communities of “communion,” entailing “a profound meeting or encounter,” both social and spiritual.

If these three kinds of “community” are conflated without reflection, especially “geographic community” and “community of communion,” then one could be forgiven the presupposition that “community only happens face to face” (though, even there, is one in geographic community only with those neighbors whom one has seen face to face?). Once these three are distinguished, however, especially including the “communities of interest” that we all accept as naturally distributed, it becomes clear that we cannot simply presuppose that communities even of “communion” happen only face to face. The matter has to be posed as a genuine question.

Elements of [Online] Community

The same Infed page goes on to examine the constituent elements of “community” (or of “communities”). Among the “norms and habits” of community are “tolerance, reciprocity, and trustworthiness.” For my own part, I find “tolerance” a grudging word and prefer “acceptance,” allowing us a neat mnemonic: Acceptance, Reciprocity, and Trustworthiness. There is an ART to community! In this context, “acceptance” means that everyone gets to be heard. Nobody’s experience or ideas are preemptively disallowed. “Reciprocity” means that I’ll do for you now without immediate reward, confident that you (or someone else in the group) will come through for me when I need it down the line. “Trustworthiness” means consistency, reliability, both on the part of teaching staff and fellow students. You know that experiment where they drive dogs crazy by rewarding and punishing them arbitrarily and unpredictably? “Trustworthiness” is the opposite.

I’m not sure how to measure “community” in a classroom. But I’ll bet you (and your learners, for that matter) can come up with ways to assess the learning space for Acceptance, Reciprocity, and Trustworthiness. Now, when the question comes up as to whether this happens only “face to face,” where there is “embodiment” (I’m going to let the Incarnation take care of itself), we can point to actual instances of online courses and frame it as a question: Are the elements of community present or not, and how so, and how do we know, and what might be done about it? This is messier than a thought-stopping cliché, and therefore undoubtedly closer to reflecting the truth of the situation.

In a follow-up post, I will address a final common response:

“So, I’ll Be Able to See All Their Faces, Right?”

 

 

Understanding Bible by Design: Create Courses with Purpose is part of the Seminarium Elements book series.

Order today at fortresspress.com and Amazon.com.

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Photo Credit: Made available on Pixabay by Public Domain Pictures

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