On (Thinking About) Theological Education Online

or

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Internet

A Series of Questions with Hopefully Practical Responses

Prepared by Callid Keefe-Perry
(whose opinions are entirely his, not anyone else's)

Doctoral Fellow in Theological Studies

Boston University School of Theology

@CallidKP | Callid@theopoetics.net

Q1: So, my dean / department chair / seminary president just informed me that we're going
digital soon. Besides the fact that that phrase is decidedly 1990s, what big stuff do I need to
know?
First off, the most important thing I can say is
that while this is a process that takes time see
below: Q8: Oh, and I'm Supposed to Have It
All Ready for Next Week it is definitely an
achievable goal. You can do this.
Second, while there are many things to keep in
mind as you begin to think about how to most
effectively teach online, there is definitely one
big thing that you'll need to consider to shift
your technique and approach. Consider the
diagram to the left.
It is from a terrific report complied by Karen
Swan for the Sloan Consortium, an incredible
resource for information about online learning.
What the diagram suggests the report cites
lots of data backing it up that online learning
is equally dependent on (1) interaction with
peers, (2) interaction with content, and (3) interaction with instructors. That means that depending on how
you teach in the traditional classroom environment, this could be a startling transition. Most people will
find that they need to shift somewhat. Which leads me to the first big point.

The shift online is more than a change of medium:

how you teach learning happens will have to change.
The fact is, most of our classrooms are heavily weighted toward the learning from content circle. That
simply is not going to be as effective in the online environment. In fact, it has been demonstrated that
student satisfaction is directed tied to the students' sense of connection to the learning community of the
class (Middleton). If you are still tied to a didactic I know things they need to know model... well... that
will be challenging.
Third, begin to ask yourself what kinds of activities will
be geared toward which kind of interaction. A good
online course will allow participants to engage all three.
While it is good advice for the traditional classroom as
well, Backwards Design (McTighe & Wiggins, 1998) is
a great way to think about things.
Getting ready to go online can bring about anxiety and
the thought that you need to include all kinds of hightech bells and whistles. Maybe you do, but if your goals
aren't served by dings and whistling then your flashy
futuristic applets won't be helping anyone. Ask yourself
three questions:

1. What should they know by the end?

2. How will I know they know it?
3. How can I help them get good at showing me that?
While the second and third questions above may have technological parts to their answers, the first one
does not necessarily. Think of it this way: doing things
online allows you the freedom to come up with more
SIDENOTE: I can't emphasize enough
creative ways for participants to show you and their
how much easier this whole thing
peers that they know something. If the course you are
will be if you see this process as one
teaching is one you've taught before you probably already
that enables you to do more with
have learning objectives/goals. Those might be great ways
your class. I understand that this
to start.
whole thing is possibly anxietyproducing, but with good preparation
Oh, and get these two things:
and advance reflection this can be
ever bit maybe more of a
powerful experience for everyone
Best Practices for Online Education: A Guide for
involved. In fact, in reflecting on
Christian Higher Education edited by Mark Maddix,
questions #2 & #3 you might even
James Estep, and Mary Lowe. It is a must have. You won't
find that there are new answers to
agree with it all, but you should have it.
#1 that you want to try. That's great.
Go for it.
Theological Education. Volume 42, Number 2
2007. It is an entire issue on Technology, Teaching, and
Learning: Reports from the Field. It isn't all about online classes, but much of it is and/or addresses issues
pertaining to it.

Q2: I've been teaching my course, INSERT COURSE TITLE, for years already. What are the
steps to make to get it ready to go online? How do I convert it?
First, precursor comment: I've come to think about the process somewhat like learning a foreign language...
When you're learning to speak another language the beginning tendencies are toward saying things in
your head in your native tongue and then translating from that language into the new one. That works.
Kind of. But fluency will require moving beyond a middle step and learning to think in the new
language.
If you've been told that this is coming down the road but it
isn't happening immediately, consider taking a class online
MOOC: A Massive Open Online Course
make sure it isn't a MOOC and seeing how things go.
(MOOC; /mu
k/) is an online course
Fluency comes with practice. If not, that is OK: learning by
immersion works too!
aimed at unlimited participation and

open access via the web. In addition

to traditional course materials such
as videos, readings, and problem sets,
MOOCs provide interactive user
forums that help build a community
for students, professors, and teaching
assistants (TAs). MOOCs are a recent
development in distance education
which began to emerge in 2012.

If your timeline for preparation is relatively short, I think

that there are several questions beyond your goals that you
can ask yourself to get your process going:

What online resources are already there

online in the content area for this course?
How am I going to plan to interact with
participants in the class?

Given that this will likely be new to students

as well, how can I periodically check to be sure things are going well? How
will I give feedback?
Am I willing / able to make changes as things go along?
While those questions are hopefully clear, I want to put particular emphasis on the last two.
On Feedback
Research strongly suggests that student performance is linked to immediate feedback & individualized
instruction (Riccomini, 2002; Kashy, et al, 2003). That being said, don't go crazy on student feedback.
Like anything else, setting boundaries on your time is important. Should you let an entire semester go by
without letting a student know that her weekly postings are insufficient? Nope. Should you reply to every
student every day? Nope.
On Changes
Some institutions require that the whole course be uploaded in advance. The pitch here is that the
professor does all the work in advance and is just left to interact with students. If this is your
institution's method, well... I'm not sure what to tell you other than I think it does a disservice to you as
an educator and to your students. This isn't to say thinking all the way through your course is a bad idea.
It isn't. You should. But not being able to adjust things, add resources, change content, etc. is not the way
I'd design things. Sometimes just like in the traditional classroom the particularity of a class will mean

more time gets spent on something than you anticipated when you planned it. That happens, especially if
this is the first online course you might have taught. Being able to adapt and adjust will support student
learning.
Oh, and one last thing. The vast majority of online classes are asynchronous, that it, they do not require
participants to all be online at the same time, meaning online conversations happen when students are
checking posts, not in real time. Make sure that you take this into account, noting your expectations for how
much students should check in.

Q3: OK... but how on earth is online learning going to be beneficial for theological education?
I like my classroom to be a community... Won't everyone just be alone in their own little
computer world of one?
Glad to hear that you like your room to be communal: so does the internet (see Q1). BUT, what
community looks like online and what it looks like in the classroom are different things. Just because it is
not the same doesn't mean it doesn't exist. This is
especially likely to be true if your students were
Interaction fosters the development of human content...
born in the 1980s or later: the environment in
Interaction not only promotes human contact, it
which they were raised was internet-media rich in
provides human content. It gives people not only the
ways that are hard to feel if you weren't born in it
opportunity to communicate but also to help each
or were in the field of technology as it grew.

other. And it creates a deep layer of learning content

that no developer could ever hope to create.
Stephen Downes
Some Principles of Effective E-Learning

A huge part of this is going to be based on how

you frame the course for your students: how much
you connect with them and encourage them
(through grading and feedback) to connect with
each other.

Q4: Can an online course honor the incarnational and embodied streams of practice within
the Christian tradition? If so, how?
I think so, but again, much of this is going to have to do with what you explicitly set as expectations. Is
your syllabus going to completely change the worldview of the course participants? Probably not
although if it does, I'd love to read it too but by being clear early on that you expect students to be
sincere and mindful in their work, you help engender a space in which earnest reflection is not only
welcome, but anticipated.

Students may also believe that the internet

inherently abstracts and dis-embodies learning.
You must do what you can to prevent this.
For where two or three
are gathered in my name,
I am there among them.
Matthew 18:20

Will offering a prayer in Jesus' name at the beginning of the week fix all your problems? Probably not, but
reminding participants that this course is part of their continuing development as Christians and taking
that seriously yourself can help them to remember that this isn't just the same as clicking around on the
internet for fun: you are endeavoring to provide them with a space in which they can be themselves and
grow in their faithfulness. Encourage students to update their profiles with picture and some biographical
information. Consider having Week 1 involve some introductions. Without the kind of connections that
happen in a physical classroom conversations while milling around on break, after class, etc. we lose
some of the interactions that help the group to gel. Again, be intentional about marking your expectations.

Q5: Are there clear best practices that are particularly beneficial to consider in the seminary
setting?
Yup. Lots. A number of links are included at the end, but the list below a mash-up from
teachingonthenet.org & The US Dept. of Education's Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online
Learning is a good start. Will you be able to do them all on your first go aroud? Probably not, but
consider this a nudge in the direction you want to go.

The online course is organized by Units.

There is a warm welcome to the course.

Expectations, including grading assignment expectations, are clearly stated.

Announcements and updates are posted.
There is some, but not too much, online text provided. Use print text books, audio lectures, slides,
videos, pictures and other ways as well.
Use pictures, charts, color design, artwork and other visuals in the online classroom. Visuals are not
bells and whistles, they are an integral part of communication and work in the 21st century.
Use visuals and audio. Some learners will need the cadence and medium of an instructors voice.
Participants dont just learn from your words, they also learn from your voice, the tone, the
emphasis, the energy, the authority, the engagement of your voice.
Have assessment be based on more than one type of activity. The activities can be online or offline
projects. When students engage in activities, including creating content, the interaction increases
their learning. Activities include but are not limited to making PowerPoint presentations and

Prezis, online collaborative projects, recording thought onto youtube, role playing, forum debates
(citing readings), etc.

Online learning can be enhanced by giving learners control of their interactions with media and
prompting learner reflection. Studies indicate that manipulations that trigger learner activity or
learner reflection and self-monitoring of understanding are most effective. Have them stop in the
middle of a reading and ask What is this about? How does it connect? What does this remind me
of? Etc?
Interactive reading techniques are especially useful to prompt online. (See
http://tinyurl.com/InteractiveTechniques for some examples used with younger learners)
Courses that are blended and use both online learning and face-to-face instruction perform
statistically better than pure online courses or purely face-to-face courses.

The teacher is consistently and constantly involved in the online discussion.

Participants ought to make a sufficient number of comments each week and unit.
There are one or more ungraded self-quizzes for each unit. One or more online self-quizes that are
not part of a student/participant grade are a good learning tool. They also serve as a good feedback
tool for both participants and the teacher.

Q7: What support and guidance does the school have? Also, this is not only a new thing for
me, but our whole institution.
I can't know about your institutional situation in particular, but I've got a few thoughts about this.
First, ask whoever just told you that you'd be teaching online what support there will be for training: if
nothing is set up yet see if there are any other faculty that would like to form a peer group. This can be a
daunting task and doing with other learners in a cohort might help both in terms of emotional support as
well as capacity to think together about what techniques might work. Having consistency across a
department doesn't hurt either.
Second, just because there doesn't appear to be any formal institutional support, that doesn't mean there
isn't any expertise in the institution: ask around and see if there are folks who have played around a bit
with online learning blended into their traditional classtoom. Perhaps check in another department and
see if anyone there has tried it.
Third, there are a number of online programs offering certificates in online pedagogy. I don't have any
experience with them, but they are there. Perhaps your institution could support that professional
development training...

Q8: Oh, and I'm Supposed to Have It All Ready for Next Week.
That's not really a question. And... yowza. Hopefully you are being a bit hyperbolic, because one week is
going to be tight. That being said, if you really are working under tighter time pressures than might be
ideal, remember that things unless your institution requires everything to be uploaded before the classs
starts are flexible: figure out your goals, communicate them to participants and start one week at a time.
Communicate. Communicate. Communicate.

Best Practices Links

http://www.teachingonthenet.org/best-practices-standards.cfm
http://www.designingforlearning.info/services/writing/ecoach/tenbest.html
http://www.mnsu.edu/cetl/teachingwithtechnology/
http://www.uwec.edu/AcadAff/resources/edtech/upload/Best-Practices-in-Online-Teaching-StrategiesMembership.pdf
http://teach.ucf.edu/pedagogy/bestpractices/
http://www.fctl.ucf.edu/teachingandlearningresources/coursedesign/assessment/content/101_tips.pdf

Works Cited
Kashy, D. A., G. H. Albertelli, W. Bauer, E. Kashy & M. Thoennessen. Influence of nonmoderated
and moderated discussion sites on student success. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks 7(1): 31
36, 2003. 26.
Means, Barbara. Et al. U.S. Department of Education. Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices
in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies. 2010.
Middleton, Heather. Student Satisfaction is Rooted in A Learning Community.
The Sloane Consortium.
http://sloanconsortium.org/effective_practices/student-satisfaction-rooted-learning-community
Riccomini, P. The comparative effectiveness of two forms of feedback: web-based model
comparison and instructor delivered feedback. Journal of Educational Computing Research 27(3): 231228,
2002.
Swan, Karen. Relationships Between Interactions and Learning In Online Environments.
The Sloane Consortium. http://sloanconsortium.org/publications/books/pdf/interactions.pdf