Teaching math as needed for physics (for nerds only)

I came across a physics textbook a long time ago that was striking to me because it interrupted the flow of the physics instruction with about 7 gray sections on calculus. As a teacher, this approach intrigues me. It could be used in the teaching of any discipline that has prerequisites.

Although I haven't finished or published examples of this approach. I have used something like it to teach biblical languages and the Seminary uses an approah something like this in its integrative approach to the practice of ministry. I believe it is far more effective than the "building block" model if it is done correctly. It is something like problem-based learning.


But I can imagine putting together the beginnings of a science curriculum this way.

1. Instantaneous velocity and acceleration (while discussing motion)

This is a great place to introduce the basics of finding a derivative, and this is how the Marion/Hornyak (MH) book pictured began. Integration can also be introduced as the inverse process in brief. Both would be introduced simply, to be expanded upon later.

2. Vector addition (motion in more than one dimension)
Vector addition begins to come into play as soon as you hit motion in more than one dimension. I find Young and Freedman's (YF) introduction of all things vector in chapter 1 a teaching problem. The cross product in particular is, I think, a difficult concept to introduce at the very beginning. Wouldn't it be more helpful to introduce the various characteristics of vector addition and multiplication as they arise in specific topics? This is also a place to review some basic trig.

3. Summation (forces)
When you get into forces, you could introduce summation notation and extend integral calculus. MH review definite integrals when they get to the application of Newton's laws.

4. Vector dot product (work)
Young and Freedman introduce dot products in chapter 1, but students don't need it until chapter 6. Why not introduce it there? There are more integrals in the treatment of work. So an integrative approach could be solidifying and extending techniques of integration as the student went along.

5. Partial derivatives, nablus (energy)
It is amazing to me that I wasn't introduced to partial derivatives until my third semester of calculus and I don't remember hearing about the nablus/gradient in four semesters. Yet these are relatively easy concepts I could have learned in a first semester. This is frequently the case. Teaching the calculus in order, you don't get to simple and useful concepts until way down the line.

Yet chapter 7 of YF already introduces these fairly straightforward concepts in their treatment of energy.

6. Integration in two and three dimensions
MH have a calculus 5 section on this before a chapter on angular momentum. YF also have an advanced section involving integration in their chapter on angular velocity.

7. Radian measurement (angular velocity)
YF review radian measurement as they begin their chapter on angular velocity.

8. Cross product
It is not until chapter 10 and the treatment of torque that YF ever use the vector cross product. Why introduce it in chapter 1, when most students will have no idea what it means or what it is for?

9. Taylor series
MH review this third semester calculus topic in between their chapters on gravitation and periodic motion.

10. Differentials
I see some differentials by themselves in YF treatment of thermodynamics.

11. Surface integrals
When you get into Gauss' law regarding electric flux

12. The gradient
More partial differentials when you get to electric potential

13. More cross product
When you get into electromagnetic induction

14. Second order differential equations
MH finally review second order differential equations, a fourth semester calculus topic, as they are digging deeper into electromagnetic waves.

I picture, perhaps, two teachers tag teaming over the course of a year or summer intensive. Problems might circle back around to earlier physics topics after new mathematical concepts were introduced. Similarly, methods of application (e.g., in calculus) could be introduced in the process of doing problems.

Just some ideas for a Monday morning...

Learning Outcomes and Competency Based Degrees

Educators made the shift several years ago to think of college classes in terms of "outcomes" rather than professors talking about a topic. This is a good model, assuming that there are clear reasons for these courses to exist. I support this approach, although a certain personality can obsess over outcomes in unhelpful ways.

1. Unexamined assumptions can come into play here too. The benefit of some courses may be the journey rather than some specified destination. So IWU parents often have said, "You need to take a class with Wilbur Williams while you're at IWU." What they are saying is that there is something about the experience of a class with him that is possibly more significant than the Old Testament content of the class. Students have often talked about the experience for the rest of their life, long after they have forgotten when King Jeroboam II reigned.

But it would be foolish to put that on a syllabus--"By the end of this course, students should be able to articulate the benefit of taking a class with Wilbur Williams." The fact that some would almost have you say something like that demonstrates the current sickness and obsession in some parts of the academy.

It is perfectly legitimate for some courses--maybe a small minority but they are an important reminder--to be about the journey rather than a specific destination. The greatest benefit of some courses is also somewhat intangible. It's not that you can't find way to measure such things. It's that you shouldn't always have to. "By the end of this Frisbee game, the student should be able to articulate the importance of having fun." That's how twisted the assessment obsession becomes in the hands of some personalities.

You don't have to measure something for it to be good. There's a positivist fallacy at work here. "If a student learns something in the forest, and there's no one there to measure it, does she actually learn something." The answer is yes. How about this one. "If a student has clean fun at the university, and it doesn't have a learning outcome, is it a good thing." Yes. Yes, it is.

The outcomes shift has been a real improvement to our educational system. It just needs to be kept in proper perspective. There's a special padded cell waiting for those who obsess about the verbs in the outcomes list of a proposed course.

2. Ironically, I didn't actually start this post to rant about the current assessment obsession of the academy. My point was rather that you can break down the essential knowledge and skills content of a course into micro-outcomes. The movement toward competency based granting of academic credit is fascinating to me, and I strongly support it as an option.

Obviously you lose some of the experience of a classroom. You lose the professor-student experience that, for many of us, is more of what we remember from college than the actual content. I would hate for us to go to an extreme (again) and say this is the only way to conceptualize a course. I hope that in 10 years a new course proposal will not require 1500-2000 individually specified micro-outcomes, each of which needs to be assessed. This is the trajectory of the academy right now.

Mind you, it would be fun for me to create that list (as long as I was not required to). For example, it would be fun to break down a New Testament survey course into a long list of knowledge and skills outcomes. If a person could demonstrate that he or she had that knowledge and skills, why not grant them credit for the class, even if he or she has never sat in a classroom? The credit becomes something more like a certification of knowledge and skills rather than a statement about time spent in a room.

3. Some teachers will notice that I have left off what we call "dispositional" or "attitudinal" outcomes. They're hard to measure even in the traditional classroom. Perhaps a first thought is that this is one place where a hyper-outcomes, competency based-approach is inferior to having a classroom experience.

But not necessarily. You can require, as an artifact to demonstrate competency, interaction with people or experiences in the student's own context in order to undergo attitudinal change. Reflective writing can demonstrate maturity achieved. Never say never.

4. The competency based approach seems to be the next thing. It has the potential to reduce student debt, speed up the process of getting through college, to clarify with great specificity what given courses are really about, and to ensure that students do in fact acquire such knowledge, skills, and dispositions.

An outcomes orientation has a tendency to clean up a lot of waste in the classroom. Obsession aside, it is clearly a good thing. There can be intangible benefits to the classroom experience, but there is plenty of room for improvement there too. How many students can't remember whole classes they took in college? It's very common!

A lot of general education classes are this way. Students take them to check them off a list and hardly remember that they ever took them. They may not even be able to tell you who the professor was a year or two later. That seems like a waste. That professor hasn't left a personal mark and is more or less extraneous. That course might just as well have been skipped. It's not doing what it's supposed to do.

If students don't have fun memories of a class or professor they took, then I'm not sure there's any basis to say that it wouldn't have been just as good or probably better for them just to have worked through achieving a list of competencies on their own. And, if there is a mentor involved, we have just come full circle back to the Ox-Bridge model, where a professor set a string of individualized learning experiences until s/he was satisfied that the student was cooked.

Primary and Secondary Sources

Let me buck the academic norm again and say this. A master must know the primary sources. A teacher should know the primary sources. But, in terms of learning, secondary sources (including the teacher) are usually FAR, FAR, FAR more important than the primary ones. A good teacher or secondary source can abstract the key points in a relevant way, while primary sources are often obtuse and idiosyncratic.

The skill of abstracting information from a primary source is a useful one, and the deeper someone goes into a topic, the more important it becomes to evaluate secondary sources in the light of the primary ones. But when it comes to learning, the vast majority of students will learn FAR, FAR, FAR more--and FAR more students will be started on the journey to understanding--if you begin with summaries and secondary evaluations of primary writings, even if such summaries and evaluations would prove to be wrong on some details!!!

It is hard for me to express how frustrating I find the intellectual purist on these things. I can get the vast majority of college students in the door. Those who wish may then go on with the perfectionist to perfection, and they can laugh at how stupid I was on so many things. But the purist gets VERY few in the door with the "all or nothing" entry way, many of whom go on simply to perpetuate the same ineffective purism.

For example, I can see an honor's introductory philosophy class wading through some primary sources, but I GUARANTEE you that the vast majority of students in an introductory philosophy class will more be left with a disgust and distaste for philosophy--and a confirmed conviction of its general irrelevance--if you make them wade through the Republic or Marx's Communist Manifesto instead of summarizing and systematizing the key ideas of these thinkers from a contemporary standpoint.

So you tell me, O Academic Man, which is better, to get the 10 students who are able to follow you through the primary sources, or the 100 students I could lead to the same ultimate destination starting with secondary ones?

I have seen another evil under the sun, and it weighs heavily on me.

Brain Rule #5: Repeat to remember

My summaries of the book Brain Rules continue...
________________
Chapter 5: Short Term Memory
In the late 1800s, Hermann Ebbinghaus did a groundbreaking study on memory, and we regularly mention some of his conclusions still today.  Medina gives us one of the most famous: "People usually forget 90 percent of what they learn in a class within 30 days" (100).  Ebbinghaus' conclusion was that different memories have different life spans.  The more a person repeats the memory to oneself, especially at intervals apart from each other, the more likely it is to stick long term. "Spaced learning is greatly superior to massed learning."

Backing up a little, there is more than one type of learning.  "Declarative memories are those that can be experienced in our conscious awareness" (101).  The names of the planets or what color shirt someone was wearing are these kinds of memories.  By contrast, nondeclarative memories are memories of which we are not consciously aware, like the motor skills that enable us to ride a bike.

Declarative memories involve four steps: 1) encoding the memory, 2) storing it, 3) retrieving it, and 4) forgetting it (98).  Chapter 5 is about the process of encoding memories. The most famous example of this process not working is a person known as H.M. He suffered a head injury that caused him serious seizures, and a neurosurgeon removed part of his temporal lobe (behind his ears) in the early 1950s. The result is that he was not able to convert short term to long term memory. Many years later, he could not recognize himself in the mirror, because his long term memory only remembered his face from his late 20s.

Interestingly, when your brain gets new input, it breaks it apart and distributes it to different storage places in your brain.  "It is like a blender left running with the lid off" (104).  For example, vowels and consonants go to different places, as one woman who suffered a particular stroke experienced (105).  The question of how the brain keeps such distributed information together is called the "binding problem."

For our experiences, the encoding is automatic.  Other memories, like memorizing a Social Security number, require "effortful processing" (107).  There are three other kinds of encoding.  Semantic encoding has to do with the meanings of words. Phonemic encoding has to do with sounds and structural encoding has to do with shapes.

The big question, again, is how the brain keeps track of the different pieces of a memory in the different parts of the brain. Despite our ignorance of the answer, Medina gives three key observations. First, "the more elaborately we encode information at the moment of learning, the stronger the memory" (110).  The more connections we make to a memory, the more likely we are to remember it, especially if we make a personal connection to it.  "More complexity means greater learning" (111).

Secondly, "A memory trace appears to be stored in the same parts of the brain that perceived and processed the initial input" (111). "The neural pathways initially recruited to process new information end up becoming the permanent pathways the brain reuses to store the information" (112).  "The brain has no central happy hunting ground where memories go to be infinitely retrieved." Instead, memories are stored in multiple areas.

Finally, "Retrieval may best be improved by replicating the conditions surrounding the initial encoding" (113). Where were you when you learned something?  What mood were you in at the time? You've probably heard to retrace your steps when you can't find something.  It's a sound suggestion.

Medina ends the chapter with three suggestions to improve your encoding of memories.  They all boil down to what Medina calls "door handles." The more associations, the more handles you have on the door to the memory, the more likely you are to be able to remember it.

So, first, give real world examples (114-15).  The more examples, the more likely you are to remember.  The more personal an example, the more likely you are to remember. The more you connect new information to information already stored in your brain, the better you'll remember.

Secondly, give compelling introductions when you are speaking (116-17).  "Introductions are everything." "The events that happen the first time you are exposed to a given information stream play a disproportionately greater role in your ability to accurately retrieve it at a later date."

Finally, associating learning with a particular environment can enhance the encoding. The example was given of a family that was trying to teach its children both English and Spanish at home.  The breakthrough came when they designated one room in the house as the "Spanish room" where only Spanish was spoken. The familiar setting helped the family encode Spanish memories in that room.

Choosing and Evaluating Church Curriculum

This morning I found myself summarizing a chapter by Keith Drury called, "Choosing and Evaluating Curriculum.”  It's in a book called Discipleship That Transforms.  As usual, it is crystal clear and eminently practical.

Curriculum is “a planned sequence of learning experiences that organizes learning and change in an orderly manner to accomplish the spiritual development of people” (192). Or to unpack his definition:

• Good curriculum is planned—it plans learning sometimes over ten years or more.
• It is sequential—it asks about the best order to learn material.
• It is organized and orderly.
• It asks not only about what people need to know but how they need to change, especially in terms of spiritual development.

Here are some important terms often used in relation to curriculum (193-95):

• Goals and objectives: Goals are long term (over months and years) while objectives are more short term (in a unit or single lesson).
• Outcomes: The direction of education these days is more toward talking in terms of outcomes—what should a student know, be able to do, or just be in general at the end of an assignment. Preferably, the outcome should be measurable, something you could demonstrate was accomplished.
• Cognitive-affective-behavioral: These are types of outcomes. Cognitive refers to things someone might know. Affective outcomes relate to feelings or attitudes. Behavioral outcomes have to do with actions or skills.
• Educational mission: What is the entire multiyear curriculum plan trying to accomplish? Drury gives an example: “To help individuals recognize God as revealed in Scripture, respond in personal faith, seek to follow him as fully devoted Christians, be incorporated into Christ’s church and become actively involved in God’s mission in the world, as they live in the full power of the Holy Spirit growing to Christian maturity” (194).
• Scope and sequence: The scope is the range of material to be covered. The sequence is the order of material to be covered.
• Area or theme: Sometimes a scope and sequence can be broken down into themes (e.g., salvation, vocation, etc.).
• Teaching strategy: The pattern used to move through each lesson in the curriculum, taking into account factors like age level readiness and attention span. Here is an example: 1) hook (capture interest), 2) book (study the Bible), 3) look (examine life—apply), and 4) took (enact into life).

In a local church, Drury recommends the following as a process for selecting curriculum:

• Organize the decision-makers. Who should decide?
• Establish your evaluation criteria. How will you evaluate curriculum?
• Examples include age appropriateness, whether it fits your theology, how expensive is it, how much preparation does it require of teachers, how widely can you use it among groups, does it give application or only talk theoretically, etc.
• Weight the criteria. Which factors are most important to you?
• Send for samples and documentation.
• Evaluate the curriculum materials.
• Make a decision.
• Plan periodic assessments of the material.

Brain Rule #4: We don't pay attention to boring things.

The summaries continue.

I have spent a good deal of my life struggling to find ways to pay attention, even as I read this chapter.  It was an interesting chapter and I am deeply interested in the subject. But I have had to develop mechanisms throughout my life to help me get through reading and other tasks.  If I am ever a speaker or writer who holds your attention, it is because I will get bored with myself as quickly as any of you will. Boring is the death knell of a sermon, a classroom--a university that is boring is a dead man walking.

"Better attention always equals better learning" (74).  Accordingly, if we are interested in people learning something, we had better take holding attention into account.  Medina believes that research puts the normal attention span at 10 minutes. He treats this time limit as somewhat universal, but there are other voices that suggest that the number may have some cultural dimensions.  For example, I have heard more recently that the number is down to 7 minutes among younger people in the United States.

What sorts of things impact our attention?  Medina's first list starts with memory.  "We use previous experience to predict where we should pay attention" (75).  Culture can play a major role in that regard. For example, someone who lives in the jungle of New Guinea pays attention to things a Westerner would hardly notice, and vice versa.

Other interests or sources of arousal are more universal.  The unusual or unpredictable usually grabs our attention.  Medina also talks about what little we know about how awareness takes place.  The brain has two haves.  The left hemisphere has a rather limited "spotlight" on the world and is only capable of paying attention to things on the right side of our visual field (77).  The right one, on the other hand, has a more "global spotlight."

Medina's next section deals with the process of grabbing our attention.  He draws on the work of Michael Posner to suggest a "Trinity Model," a three stage process of grabbing attention.  Stage one involves what Posner calls the "Alerting or Arousal Network" (79).  Medina intentionally began the chapter with the story of a man who broke into his house with a gun in the middle of the night. That's the kind of story that triggers the brain's "surveillance and alert" instincts. It works with our "Intrinsic Alertness."

Next our brain shifts to "Phasic Alertness" (79).  "We orient ourselves to the attending stimulus." We gain more information in our "Orienting Network." This network then leads to our "Executive Network" and "oh my gosh what should I do now" behaviors.

So what gets our attention?  First, emotions get our attention (79-82). "Emotionally arousing events tend to be better remembered than neutral events" (79). Medina calls one an ECS, an "emotionally competent stimulus."  When our brain detects an ECS, the amygdala in the brain releases dopamine, which is like a Post-It note that says, "Remember this" (81).

These emotionally charged events are of two sorts, ones that no two individuals experience in the same way and ones that everyone experiences identically.  The individual ones are often tied to specific memories from our past.  Clanging pots arouse different emotions for Medina than for his wife because his mother used to clang pots washing the dishes when she was angry.

Meanwhile, we have universally experienced stimuli from our evolution, Medina would say.  We feel in predictable ways when a stimulus leads us to ask questions like "Will it eat me?" or "Will it mate with me?" "Have I seen it before?"

A second way to help us pay attention is to give the big picture before getting to the details (82-84).  "Arousal focuses attention on the 'gist' of an experience at the expense of peripheral details" (83).  (As a side note, one wonders if personality comes into play here, since some personalities are more detailed oriented)  "Memory is enhanced by creating associations between concepts" (84).

A third warning Medina gives is that the brain cannot truly multitask (84-88). If you get a text message while working on a paper, you have to shift away from one activity and activate a new part of your brain to look at the next activity.  To return to the paper, you have to shift again and activity the paper writing parts of your brain again.  "Studies show that a person who is interrupted takes 50 percent longer to accomplish a task.  Not only that, he or she makes up to 50 percent more errors" (87).  Some people can switch tasks more quickly than others but no one can truly multitask in terms of paying attention (we can do some things subconsciously like walking while talking to someone).

Finally, the brain needs a break.  "Most teachers overstuff their students" (88).  "Relating too much information, with not enough time devoted to connecting the dots" does not facilitate good learning.  He comes to a conclusion with which many students will identify: "expertise doesn't guarantee good teaching" (89).

He ends the chapter with a classroom session designed around these insights.  (On a side note, he falls short because he is still primarily speaking in terms of lecture rather than diversified activities)  He divides a 50 minute class into 10 minute segments.  Each 10 minute segment is divided into 1 minute of overview, and 9 minutes of more details.

At the end of each ten minute segment, he "baits the hook" by triggering an emotion.  He usually starts with a hook at the beginning of the lecture.  Then after two or three hooks, about halfway through the lecture, he has found he doesn't need to hook more.

His parting word: "Do one thing at a time" (93). It reminds one of a time management tip to divide your day into small 20-30 minute tasks. Shut off email and other distractions until you finish it. Take a short break. Then move on to the next task.

Intriguing Question of Day at ATS

I'm at the Chief Academic Officers part of the Association of Theological Schools meeting in Minneapolis today.  Here is the random question someone asked that I found most intriguing today:

When so many great learning videos are online, when students can watch instructors at MIT online, what will we do in the traditional classroom to make it worth the educational consumer's while?  Assuming they're not going to come to our colleges to hear us lecture--since whether we like it or not there's a good chance they can get better on YouTube at home--how will we change the college classroom so that it gives a student something they can't get in a video lecture they find on the web?

Shifting Teaching Landscape

This may sound strange, but the teaching landscape in university and seminary education is really changing. The new focus is on learning.

You may ask, "Well, what was it about before?" There is always "what we say" and "what we do." The "what we do" is the real thing. The "what we say" is a game humans play, a very funny game.  The peacock squawks and spreads out its feathers.  It does a little dance.  That particular game is about mating, to put it nicely.

But teaching at the college level and beyond has tended to be about a professor saying something.  A professor was someone who had something to say, a smart guy or gal. Whether or not anyone learned anything was up to the student. In many cases, a grade might all come down to one test with one question at the end, a poor assessment at best.

Now, it's about good teaching or, more precisely, about effective learning. Online teaching has particularly hammered this fact home to me, especially in formats where the content and pedagogy are standardized and pre-loaded into the course like at the University of Phoenix. A person might be an amazing facilitator that the students love because s/he gives immediate feedback and is able to move discussion along in stimulating ways.

Notice I said "facilitator" rather than "professor." A facilitator needs to be good at facilitating learning. He or she or she doesn't have to be a leading expert at the subject, although certainly students prefer and benefit most from someone who is both an expert in a subject and an excellent teacher as well.

So many of us went into teaching (or preaching for that matter) because we like to talk or seem to know stuff. There will always be a place for a speaking circuit. But room for the genius know-it-all professor will increasingly be limited. Their days in the average college are numbered, because they often cannot do anything but talk.

While this is sad for people like me who like to talk, it's a boon for most students, who will learn more. And maybe we can bring in the brilliant but pedagogically-challenged occasionally as a side-show, just so students can know what genius is... but we'll have someone else help the students process the show...

Lecture vs. Problem Based Learning

This study that Scot McKnight quotes gives exactly the results I would expect.  Lecture covers more material in a shorter amount of time, but the average learning is significantly less than problem based learning.  I believe this conclusion also applies to online teaching with little lecture and a lot of discussion forums.  The average student take away is greater, even though the student who best learns in "binge mode" may not learn as much.

We are now, of course, in a position to video/audio record or even have live lectures in online classes, allowing for what is sure to become more and more of a hybrid online learning experience going forward.  Indeed, I know of seminaries that are experimenting with real time online classes that are just like traditional classes except the students are all over the globe.

P.S. As ideal as that may sound, in the end, most students prefer to have the freedom to get on whenever they want, which is why any electives I offer (e.g., Hebrew for Ministry that starts at the end of the month) have a one hour real time video session that you are urged to attend but is recorded so you can view it later if you cannot.

Pedagogy of Faith in the Science Classroom

Indiana Wesleyan University is hosting a conference on campus, June 27-29, on the question of how faith and science should or might co-exist in classrooms of all kinds.  Here is the website for the conference.

The purpose of the conference is not to discuss the merits of various positions on issues (e.g., theistic evolution) but to discuss pedagogy and to discuss it in the pursuit of insight, not indoctrination.  So not only will there be young earth creationists there, but Karl Giberson of BioLogos will be keynoting.  J. P. Moreland the apologist from Talbot at Biola will also be keynoting.

It should be interesting!  Dennis Brinkman, chair of the School of the Physical and Applied Sciences here, has had no shortage of angry emails, ranging from those who think faith and science should have nothing to do with each other to those who think Christian pedagogy should only indoctrinate against evolutionary theory.  Papers of all sorts are on the program, including a paper from a self-avowed atheist who insists he cannot help but discuss questions of faith in his classes because, whether he likes it or not, his students always bring the issue up.

Admission is $125 if you have your own lodging.  It is $225 if you need to stay in our lodges.

Criteria for a good paper...

I'm beginning to grade position papers for my Hebrews class, probably the last undergraduate class I will teach at IWU for the foreseeable future. I always reinvent the wheel. Here is the list of criteria I've respun for grading:

Writing
• Has good organization
• Has a thesis
• Grammar/spelling

Hermeneutics
• Difference between their world and our world
• Difference between individual books
• Understands literary context
• Understands historical-cultural context
• Understands how words work

Balance
• Fair to opposing viewpoints

Depth
• Shows research
• X-cellence factor

Am I missing anything?

An "A-HA" moment I had for online education...

I believe in online education. I don't prefer it either as a teacher or a student. But I believe in it. Most of the arguments against it are vastly outweighed by its advantages, that is, if it is done have right.

Here are some things I believe about online education:

1. Because everyone has to participate in an online class, the average learning in an online class will almost always far exceed the average learning in an onsite class...

... that is, unless the onsite teacher uses teaching methods that engage every student, and every student's learning style...

... which hardly any professors do. Most of us prefer to lecture, perhaps the least effective of all teaching methods.

2. I do prefer embodiment, embodied interaction. But I guarantee you in keeping with #1 that there's a whole lot more interaction on the whole in an online class than there is in the vast majority of onsite ones.

Those who make a big deal about email, texting, etc. being the bane of society have a point--for their personality. One of the great things about doing the Myers-Briggs personality inventory when I went to seminary was the realization that other people don't think the way I do. Learning of the different Kolb learning styles had the same effect. So many people just assume that what works for them is what works for everyone else.

Wrong! Don't impose your personality on other people if it doesn't apply.

3. Online education is here to stay. There are some pitiful academics who said it was a fad (like the internet) when it first came out. There are some accrediting bodies that are holding tightly onto at least some embodied courses... and the institutions where they hold power will be the first to close. New accrediting bodies are already rising up and causing the old ones to get with it or go out of business.

Not even a question. Get with it or get run over.

4. Now for my AHA moment. One of the aspects of online education that is potentially hampering is the inability to go to a library and browse. Now IWU has excellent library services that send books to distance students when they are requested. The problem for me is the difficulty in browsing. I like to go browse a shelf at the library. I will inevitably find books I wouldn't have known about, just because they're shelved in a section I'm looking at.

Here was my AHA moment. Google Books has made it possible for me to do one better than a bibliography for a class whether onsite or online. Right now one of my undergraduate classes is doing an interpretation of 2 Thessalonians 2:4. I have a set of 2 Thessalonians commentaries on reserve in the library. And I have the same set of books and a few more in an online library by way of Google Books here. There they can search this set of books that I've set up for them.

Google has a function for searching other people's "libraries." Just imagine if, over time, we were to create Wiki-libraries based on bibliographical categories!

The Increasing Face of Education

I was gone Monday and Tuesday from classes at IWU because I was in San Diego.

So to recoup the loss of class time, I set up several blog discussions. How much you want to bet they will learn more from these than from me standing in front of them lecturing?

I'm convinced that the best model for education is one in which things like textbooks (substitute for an expert), information disseminated by the prof beforehand (when the prof is also an expert), as well as video and podcasts (in lieu of lectures) will be done before "class time."

In other words, lectures will not take place during "class time"--and shouldn't. "Class time" is time for unpacking the reading/viewing students have done prior to class, including the evaluation, analysis, synthesis, and appropriation of it.

Eventually, the very idea of "class time" becomes squishy. Participation in a blog discussion, if done correctly, creates a higher average appropriation than in class. In class, only a few students usually make comments. Online, everyone has to participate or else they're not there. Coming video technology will make it easier for such discussions to involve faces.

Indeed, we have already reached a point where online classes do not have to be asynchronous (not done at the same time), although there are advantages to asynchronous posting too.

Anyway, the blogs I've set up in lieu of my classes are not state of the art, but they work. Here are a few:

Intertestamental Literature: http://www.intertestament.blogspot.com/

General Epistles: http://www.generalepistles.blogspot.com/

Inductive Bible Study: http://www.integratedbiblestudy.blogspot.com/

Happy Thanksgiving!

The Perfect Bible Course?

I have never taught a Bible course that I have been really satisfied with. Much of it is my difficulty in getting feedback back. But there is also a real sense in which I am conflicted about what the goals of such courses are. I have generally taught these courses at Christian institutions whose primary goal is to equip future or present ministers. Or survey courses are usually meant to in some way largely to fortify the spirituality of future laypeople.

Yet from my perspective, those who set the curriculum usually have a bit of a misconception of how biblical meaning works. For example, those who put survey courses into the general education curriculum of Christian colleges usually operate under the assumption that learning the Bible's content is the same thing as learning how to live or think. And it is often assumed that learning this content automatically equates to a deeper spirituality.

Sometimes these goals are accomplished if the course is taught by a non-biblical specialist or someone with a pre-modern understanding of the Bible, usually adjuncts. The text is used to mirror the spiritual values, beliefs, and ethics of the Christian culture in which the text is taught.

Yet there is also a strange irony that the biblical specialists who usually teach such courses have been trained to know the original meaning. They've been trained to deconstruct the "what you see is what you get" Sunday School approach. They teach about genres and ancient culture. The student learns that Jeremiah 29:11 was not written about them but that the "thoughts I have toward you" were thoughts about Israelites who had been taken as prisoners to Babylon in 586BC.

What's even worse is that evangelical colleges sometimes restrict their Bible courses to those who have passed through the fires of an "inductive Bible study" (IBS) course to teach them how to read the Bible in context. Indeed, the scandal of Bible teaching at Indiana Wesleyan University is that the overwhelming majority of its students will never be able to take a Bible elective because they have to take the IBS course first! It's absolutely outrageous, if you think about it.

Well, I've gotten off topic. For now I'm teaching future ministers of one sort or another, and I agree that ministers need to study the Bible on a different level than laypeople need to. So what are the skills that I should incorporate into my "upper level Bible," "for future minister" classes? Here's my shot as I finish my syllabi for the Spring.

1. They should know the content of the biblical books in question.

2. They should know the major themes of those books and have integrated the themes in those books with the rest of the Bible.

3. They should have located those themes and that content in relation to the commonly held beliefs and ethics of the universal church and their "local" church (including their denomination, if they have one).

4. They should have appropriated this integrated content into their personal and corporate lives, through the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

5. They should be equipped to teach and proclaim this integrated content both to Christian and non-Christian as appropriate.

These seem to me to be the most essential outcomes of an upper level Bible course. But there are others of lesser priorities that I think are also completely appropriate for a minister. Indeed, some of the following are skills that help one achieve those that precede.

6. They should rehearse and extend their skills at observing the biblical text both in survey and detail.

7. They should rehearse and extend their skills of interpreting the biblical text in the light of its original context.

8. They should know the major critical issues that relate to the biblical texts in question.

The difference between undergraduate and graduate level courses lies in scope and depth.

To the extent that my ponderings might affect future curriculum wherever, any thoughts, suggestions, or critique?

My Foray into Problem Based Learning

I have tried to incorporate a problem based learning approach into my two upper level Bible classes this semester. What I have done is dream up some church crisis that relates to whatever chapter of Philippians or Galatians (two different classes) we might happen to cover on the content quiz that day, then the class breaks up into groups to solve the crisis. We are to bring in anything we know--like things from pastoral counseling classes, church leadership, Christian ed, theology, etc.

Of course since it is a Bible class, the focus is on interpreting and appropriating biblical texts in relation to a problem. I have most of the commentaries from the library on Philippians and Galatians checked out and they are at the front of the room for reference. I also encourage the students to bring their laptops and use the wireless in the building to do Google and Wikipedia searches on things like "Seventh Day Adventists" and such (see below).

Here's just a couple we have done:

1. A member of the congregation is close friends with a Seventh Day Adventist who is trying to convince her that we will not be conscious in the time between our death and our resurrection. Her friend has pointed out that Paul uses the word "sleep" in 1 Corinthians 15 and 1 Thessalonians 4. Is someone conscious when they sleep? We did this assignment on the day we took a quiz over the content of Philippians 1.

2. A women's study group is working through Galatians and is having a cat fight over what Paul says about Hagar and Sarah in Galatians 4. One woman thinks it is a prophecy about Islam, which is represented by Hagar. Another woman thinks that it means God has no more interest in Israel as a nation of Jews, that Christianity has replaced Judaism. This makes the third woman angry because she believes that the nation of Israel is a fulfillment of prophecy and a sign of the end times.

I think the classes are enjoying this approach. I cover my main objectives by quizzing and such. Then this activity is skill building without specific content objectives. And it has brought up some very central issues that you may not ever get to if you are only studying the content and original meaning:

1. What issues do we need to correct others on and when is it okay to let them be a little "heretical," if any?

2. Are all the books of the Bible at the same point in understanding? Does Paul's understanding of the afterlife develop? Does he represent the "final understanding" in the NT or does one need to go elsewhere, to Luke, for that?

3. Are some of Paul's arguments better than others? Does he make the Hagar-Sarah analogy because his opponents have raised a really good point and he's doing his best to combat it? If so, are there other arguments like this, where the situation rather than "detached, absolute truth" is driving his argument (1 Tim. 2:12?).

Of course these are issues that we leave somewhat gray because they are scary territory.

If IWU starts a seminary, I believe this way of teaching is the way to go for the bulk of the courses. In that way, these courses are highly relevant to actual ministry. I think if it was done right, such a seminary might very well revolutionize seminary education.