Resources

We can boil successful strategic planning around distance education down to three things. First, know how to create lots of ways to use the digital environment for effective teaching and learning. Second, know your potential students. Third, bring the two together: develop a set of scenarios in which to leverage certain forms of online teaching and learning to engage those potential students. Let’s break it down. The core skill to designing good modules week after week for an online or hybrid course is to find the sweet spot between learning outcomes, learning activities, and supporting technology. It would seem like that is three different skills, but it is actually one integrated set of decisions. You start by producing a clear set of learning outcomes (not goals, and not objectives, which always tend to be descriptions of course content). Then, you try to figure out a set of activities (assignments, if you will) that if the students do them will help them master the outcomes. These often progress from individual work to interactive dialogue in community. Then, you go looking for the technology that will support the learning activities that will help achieve the learning outcomes. It is circular. The magic happens when you find the right CMS functionality, tool, or plugin that not only helps the students do what they need to do to learn, but also supports you, the faculty member—especially in time management ways—keep up with the grading, assessing, and giving feedback that is all a necessary part of facilitating good learning. Together, these integrated pieces usher the students through a set of individual, small group, and corporate activities that help them achieve each module’s learning outcomes. A vibrant community of online teachers share best practices and begin to develop an array of these module scenarios (complete with outcomes, activities, and technology) that can be tweaked and modified for different content and different outcomes. This is the heart of an effective community of online teachers. The other piece of strategic planning is to know your students. This includes the usual information: where your students live, what denominations they serve, and all the other sorts of demographics we gather. But none of that is as important as being able to describe the type of life (or types of lives) that include being a part of your seminary. What are the barriers that may prevent participation in your learning community? Is it the commute? Is it the second or third commute in one week that moves the equation from possible to impossible? Is it the requirement to disrupt family, jobs, and support networks in order to move to your campus? Is it having to fly to your city two or three times a semester? A series of focus groups with a set of current students and another with prospective students could create a clearer understanding of what those barriers are. Then, a set of brainstorming sessions by your community of effective online teachers might be able to identify a new set of technology-enhanced tools and processes that could help you lower the barriers and engage your students’ lives more effectively in theological education. Strategic planning gets interesting when we can do just that: bring our newfound capabilities for creating diverse learning scenarios to bear on lowering barriers to participation in the life of your seminary—without lowering the quality of your education.  Can we leverage a virtual learning community for deeper learning in the courses we already offer—essentially increasing the quality of our education? Can we penetrate our current region to a greater degree because more types of lives can take on participation in our learning community and succeed? Can we create new scenarios that transcend the boundaries that previously limited the distance or frequency a student would have to surmount in order to come to campus?  The information age has dismantled a lot that is familiar about the way we have approached theological education. But, it could also be an avenue through which we revitalize, deepen, and extend our theological education to more people.

College students were far more uniform in age, race, and socio-economic background a few decades ago than they are now, yet colleges and universities have often failed to design programs of study that work for these students. Leading Academic Change outlines the steps to take toward change on behalf of the new majority students, the non-white, low-income, working, second language, or adult learners who often find themselves in very unfamiliar territory in college classrooms. These “first generation exclamation point” students (xiv) most often encounter ineffective and even counterproductive general education and distribution sequences, and many are transfer students from community colleges, whose curricula are at odds with those at 4-year institutions. This book proposes workable solutions to multiple missed connections. This book is less for classroom teachers than for administrators interested in meaningful structural change. Maimon relies primarily on data from years of innovation in Writing Across the Curriculum programs as well as on her own considerable administrative experiences. The central case study is Governors State University, which has successfully implemented high impact practices and a more integrated, student-centered curriculum with low administrative bloat. Drawing on the work of Judy B. Rosener, Maimon draws a clear distinction between traditional “transactional” leaders and “transformative” leaders (5). Transformative leadership brings everyone to the table and works collaboratively to achieve shared goals. Maimon aims at collaborative transformation with student success at the core. Maimon provides many concrete, multi-faceted suggestions here. In brief, the institutional transformations she supports rely on a close interaction of students and faculty, who are in this venture together. She insists on several key components to transforming institutions: a commitment to keeping funding closer to students than to administrative offices; close cooperation between student affairs personnel and classroom faculty; a willingness to take advantage of high tech while maintaining “high touch” with students; an ability to see students as people in development, who need feedback through assessing for strength, not deficit; and a willingness to allow students’ lives to enter the classroom and to inform – rather than be at odds with – the curriculum. Despite its emphasis on institutional change, this book does get down to the classroom level in several ways, particularly in emphasizing the importance of respecting students for who they are and what they know. That respect and recognition of prior knowledge can help teachers and academic leaders to scaffold a curriculum of knowledge and skills that makes sense for all concerned. Maimon also calls teachers to humility rather than judgment. She decries the endemic “Maimon Hierarchical Fallacy” which holds that some teachers in some disciplines are “smarter” than others based on how abstract their work appears to be or the level of the students they teach (57). This damages students as well as teachers and can starve introductory courses and students of the best teachers. This book is, above all, a call to give all students our very best, both in our classrooms and at our institutions. It is also a well-timed reminder that change is inevitable and that equity can be a means to achieving educational quality.

This edited volume (its authors primarily situated in England) offers a resource for those in higher education who face a rapidly changing educational landscape often marked by “increased marketization and bureaucracy” (ix). In looking at the peculiar distinctions of university pedagogy, this resource reconsiders the traditional academic tripartite roles of researcher, teacher, and administrator in light of growing challenges facing post-secondary educators today and especially in theological education and religious studies. These challenges include the increasing separation of these three academic roles from one another, the redefining of excellent teaching mostly in terms of assessment and evaluation, and finally, the reduction of teaching to a simple series of techniques and best practices. Pedagogical Peculiarities resists these trends through “deliberative dialogues” (xi) that reflectively peer into a wide swath of disciplines, university roles, and issues. In the first chapter, Stephen D. Brookfield raises two different kinds of peculiarities in university teaching. First, by teaching, educators simultaneously offer seemingly factual and neutral content amidst complex, and at times, competing internal opinions that stem from the multilayered structures of teaching. Thus, teaching is not so clean a process and is far more multifaceted than the passing on of content alone. A second peculiarity, “the contextuality of practice,” involves teaching plans that despite being mostly crafted in an educator’s solitude and internal space, experience a metamorphosis when they externally reach a student. Grand plans are adjusted and the deft teacher is left to alter plans “on the fly” (2). In the concluding chapter, “Building an Agenda for Academic Development on the Peculiarity of University Teaching,” Paul Ashwin reflects upon tensions that exist when thinking about university academic development. These tensions are between: (1) teaching as an individual and as a collective activity, (2) the local and the global in teaching, (3) complexity and simplification, (4) the practical and theoretical, (5) ideas of what it means to be an academic, (6) excellence and enhancement, and (7) the radical potential of university teaching and the tendency for conformity in university teaching (115-22). The opening and concluding chapters bookend three sections subdivided into three pedagogical identities: (1) Identity as it relates to teaching (chapters two and three); (2) Identity as it relates to the discipline (chapters four and five); and (3) Identity as it relates to the institution (chapters six and seven). The middle chapters probe Ashwin’s seven tensions through a variety of disciplines with hope of a better understanding of pedagogy and teaching. The book’s methodology, which includes dialogue, interview, case study, illustrations, and narrative, is a welcomed variation from resources written in prose. The cultural differences between a U.S.-based reviewer and a primarily U.K.-based text were apparent, but were easily clarified. Overall, this text raises important pedagogical issues for university deans, chairs, and academic development administrators. It also spurs conversations for current or aspiring academics who are rethinking their identity as teacher-scholars amidst shifting needs in higher education.

Jewish educational projects and programs are thriving, attracting philanthropic support for exciting and creative approaches in every sector and setting. But underneath that energy, we are not as clear as we ought to be about desired outcomes, the kinds of learning needed to achieve these, and how those kinds of learning actually occur. This volume is the first of its kind to bring together scholars from inside Jewish education and from the learning sciences. It offers a set of critical perspectives on learning, sometimes borrowing models from other domains (such as science) and sometimes examining specific domains within Jewish education (such as havruta learning or the learning of Jewish history). Collectively, these contributions help to advance a smarter, sharper conversation about Jewish learning that matters. (From the Publisher)

As a professor at a Catholic graduate school of theology and ministry, I need to consider the spiritual, human, intellectual, and pastoral formation of my students as I develop course curriculums. Often opportunities for growth and learning occur when students experience difficulty and dryness; conflict and confrontation; rigidity and dissonance, as well as, tensions and varying degrees of self-awareness. All of this seems to me to be fodder for growth only if a safe space which invites vulnerability without judgement is created within the learning environment. The invitation to vulnerability is set by the tone of the classroom—a welcoming smile, a nodding of one’s head, penetrating eyes—all actions which communicate respectful presence, deep listening and acceptance; not necessarily agreement. These intimate actions which facilitate trust and safety in a face-to-face classroom can be absent from the asynchronous portions of hybrid or totally online courses. I imagine that you are familiar with the adage, “The family that prays together stays together.” By extension, I hope you agree then that the family that prays together also learns, grows, and experiences life together in all its ups and downs. This is my experience in the online learning environment: the community that prays together stays together, learns together, grows together, and experiences life together in all its ups and downs. This is not to say that prayer is dispensable in the face-to-face environment, it is not. And it is not dispensable in the online environment either. Perhaps it is even more essential because the smiling faces, the nodding heads, and penetrating eyes are absent. It is my belief that communal prayer and reflection—even when engaged asynchronously or perhaps in Kairos time—enhance our common learning experience. Practically, the importance of communal prayer is made clear in the syllabus and introduction video for any online class. Each class begins with prayer. It is built into the study guide and the course module. The learning community is encouraged to participate in the weekly prayer and offer reflections in a ‘prayer blog.’ As the professor, I monitor this blog, rarely, if ever, making a public comment.  The blog is accessible in two ways: via a link within the weekly module which is placed just after the prayer, and via the ‘class blogs’ tab in the table of contents. The weekly prayer takes many forms: from videos with images and voice-overs to links which steer students to a beautiful solo accompanied by a string quartet. Prayers are chosen carefully and support the week’s theme/content. For example, when beginning a course in theological field education, a simple reading of the well-known words of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, “Trust in the Slow Work of God,” with the single image of the cosmos in video form, opens the learning community toward growth and conversion. When studying the spiritual themes of the gospels, a PowerPoint filled with images that break open the proclamation of the Beatitudes in Matthew’s gospel provides the moment of prayer. When studying Celtic spirituality, a link to a beautiful rendition of “I Arise Today” breaks open the heart. Participation of the students in this formative activity is generally between 80-90%. Some students honor the original postings with silence while others offer beautiful affirmations and gratitude. It is a sacred space. St. Teresa de Ávila writes, “Prayer is not just spending time with God. It is partly that—but if it ends there, it is fruitless. No, prayer is dynamic. Authentic prayer changes us—unmasks us, strips us, indicates where growth is needed. Authentic prayer never leads to complacency, but needles us, makes us uneasy at times. It leads us to true self-knowledge, to true humility.” Prayer in community, as you well know, takes on an organic, dynamic depth which touches the soul. If we participate with the Spirit, through prayer as a community—and in this case, as a learning community in an online environment—the Spirit opens us to create a space filled with palpable welcoming, felt affirmation, and attentive gazes. It invites us to authenticity by ‘needling’ us beyond ourselves and, in its capacity to ‘unmask’ and ‘strip us,’ together we find that we are better able to move through the difficulty and dryness, engage the conflict and confrontation, soften our rigidity and quell dissonance, and, as well, hold the tensions as we deepen into greater self-awareness supporting one another in mutual learning and growth.

Teaching in the Cracks: Openings and Opportunities for Student-Centered, Action-Focused Curriculum Brian D. Schultz New York, NY: Teachers College Press, 2017 (xiv + 128 pages, ISBN 9780807758311, $29.95) Teaching in the Cracks by Brian D. Schultz, a professor of education at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago, explores ways to make current K-12 classrooms more student-empowering, justice-oriented, and action-based. It is not that already available curricula are not student-empowering, have no concern for justice, or seldom inspire creative student actions; What most concerns the author are school systems that dictate almost everything that students experience, think, and do. In such a system, says Schultz, learning is largely top-down, authoritarian, controlled by agendas that perpetuate the status quo, and “bombarded by standards, assessments, [and] evaluations” (86). Shultz’s critiques and enthusiasm focus on reforming this “troubling” system and more specifically on transforming current everyday curricula in classrooms (86). His proposal, however, stays at the level of reforming or transforming, rather than completely negating or overhauling our current educational practices. That is why he calls his suggestive methodology and transformative tactics “teaching in the cracks.” He encourages educators to find creative loopholes in the present system where they can make education more democratic, collaborative, and thus bottom-up. Schultz acknowledges that his proposal sounds great on paper but is hard to implement in the classroom, and so throughout he offers numerous practical examples of proposed curricula and how they are working around the nation. Examples vary, covering everything from a single classroom, the entire school’s curriculum, forming close partnerships with surrounding communities, and specific topics, to teacher preparation (all covered in chapters two to six). Together they make this book an invaluable reference for field educators. In particular, chapter six, “Becoming the Teacher I Want to Be: Finding Support to Teach in the Cracks,” and chapter seven: “Turning the Corner: Techniques, Resources, and Tools for Taking-Action,” should be helpful for those who would like to implement the proposed learner-centered class education in a seemingly impotent school context. In chapter six, Schultz gives two fine examples of veteran teachers who introduced several effective strategies that are applicable to other contexts as well. To be sure, contexts differ. Yet, as long as a similar school structure is involved (for example, executive administrators, a sizable student body and its own governing entity, supportive community groups, and an aspiring teacher), these strategies would be beneficial anywhere. Websites introduced in chapter seven are extremely useful resources too. This book is not per se a theoretical book on student-centered, action-focused curriculum. Rather, it is full of vivid examples of actual current practices. Some readers may find this book insufficiently radical to make a dramatic change in the existing school system, but that is not the author’s purpose. Its particular strength lies in its unabashed focus on the classroom itself. The author believes that the real change can and must happen in each individual classroom where the teacher and students meet for daily education, before any large-scale systematic change is possible. In this respect, this book provides a small, yet reliable, hope for most field educators who, like me, aspire to create a more learner-led class environment.

Belonging is a yearning of the soul. Our life’s quest is often about finding the place, purpose or persons to which or to whom we belong. We need to feel at home; we yearn to feel accepted, swaddled by our relationships. We want to experience being part of something bigger than our finite, individual, selves. The experience of belonging makes us keenly aware of the connectional-joy of humanness. Equally, the experience of alienation, of having no place to call home, of being deemed inferior, is a profound experience of dehumanization and is soul dampening.  Twenty-first century racism would have minoritized people believe that we are “welcome,” only then to be immersed in experiences of disrespect, disregard and hatred.  At best, this creates a psychic quandary for us. At worst, this harm is debilitating to our ability to teach and to learn.  The magnitude of the need to belong necessitates a pedagogical priority, especially in those white schools with minoritized persons on faculty, on staff and in the student body.   The seminary where I am on faculty is located in a very affluent New Jersey suburb. The town is a bedroom community for executives and corporate giants of Manhattan. Consequently, we enjoy clean streets, splendid restaurants, a preponderance of shopping, great theatre, and a world-class jazz club.  Also, consequently, is the existence of a clear two-tier caste society: those who live here and those who come to work as cashiers, waitresses, nannies, elder care worker, gardeners and secretaries. I, due to faculty housing, live in this town. Typically, the workers who come to town are African-American and Latinx.  The residents are typically white.  I am routinely treated by fellow residents, as well as by commuter workers, as if I do not belong here.  I am African-American living in this affluent county – an embodied oxymoron, at best. I pay taxes here, vote here, work here, but, from the gaze of the racist eyeball, I do not belong here…. I’ve lived here for twenty years. Recently, I was having breakfast at the local diner with our dean, Javier Viera. Dean Viera, born in Puerto Rico, is fluent in Spanish. When the waitress came to our table to take our order, she was, as she always is, pleasant, and, in retrospect, sad. I did not notice her sadness until it morphed into a smile. What made her smile was when Javier greeted her in Spanish and ordered his breakfast in Spanish. When Dean Viera spoke to her in Spanish it both surprised and delighted her.  Her face lit up like a Christmas tree.  At his speaking, she went from an almost invisible presence to a woman of dignity. This drastic shift happened when she was spoken to in a language which signaled her belonging – or more accurately, her shift happened when she received the signal that she was not alone, not alien.  The Dean could have ordered in English. I did. Instead, in that moment he chose a language which invited the waitress to know a little bit of who his people are, what his allegiances are, and the kind of man he is.  In this moment of belonging, he code-switched. A few years ago, I drove into the school parking lot and whipped into a space designated for faculty.  I literally parked in front of the sign that read “Reserved for Faculty.”  Distracted by my own thoughts, I got out of my car, opened the back door to get my briefcase and bags, then shut both car doors.  Still distracted as I walked, I headed up the path to the seminary building, intending to go straight to class.  Joe (not his name) was a facilities staff person whose job it was to place temporary signs around campus for upcoming events. Joe had worked at the school longer than I had and by that time I had been there for more than ten years. Joe, seeing me park in faculty parking, stopped hammering a signpost near the space where I parked. He shouted over to me, “You can’t park there.” In Black woman fashion, I decided I did not want to be bothered, this day, with this kind of #$%@##.  Without replying or acknowledging him in any way (ignoring is a Black woman survival strategy), I kept walking. Joe raised his volume and shouted in my direction, “That’s for faculty.  YOU can’t park there.” As I entered the building I looked over my shoulder to see that the sign-man had left his assigned task, walked over to my car and was inspecting the parking tag in my car window. I suspect Sign-man was surprised when my tag read “Faculty.”  Even when I “belong,” Sign-man, on the lowest tier of the hierarchy, believes he can police me and tell me that I do not belong.  WTH! $%##*! Though my enthusiasm at the start of any fall semester wanes, my clarity of purpose sharpens.  At the end of the orientation worship service I position myself in the hallway.  As the new students leave the chapel, I ferret-out the new African American and African students, shake their hands, read their name tags aloud.  I ask in which degree program they are enrolled and inquire about their fall course selection. While doing this, I keep an eye on the stairway. If it looks like a student who I have not spoken with is going down the stairs, I, in true old-Black-church-woman style, snap my fingers to get his/her attention, then wave them over to me. As I corral each student, I use Black church gestures and tones telling them, don’t wait for trouble, then decide to come find me; come sit in my office soon and we will get acquainted. I tell them to email me and we will have coffee or lunch - soon. I want them from their first day to know, at least a little bit, that they are not alone in this place. I tell them that the protocols and practices of respect, decency, and regard of Black church culture are, with their presence, operative and that I am a representative of our shared culture. I want them to know that this school has something of merit to offer them if they can just figure out how to extract the best and leave the rest. I want my gesture to signal to them my availability to help with this leg of their holy journey. I tell them, I, like the other old women of our church tradition, in any given moment, can reach in and down to my DD-located-coin-purse for a piece of money, a freshly pressed handkerchief, a peppermint candy or a straight edge.  For me, the importance of this gesture is like what our dean did for the waitress. Or, more importantly, an antidote for when, not if, the sign-man speaks to them on our campus. I am trying to communicate, in the midst of all the hollow rhetoric of “welcome,” that they belong in our school because our people have fought and won the right for us to be in this place. I code-switch. I code-switch in ear-shot of the public to signal to the African and African-American students, at least a little bit, that their racial/cultural identity is part of this place and that their/our expressions of religion, faith, values and community are here, at least a little bit.  It does not take Jim/Jane Crow era signs reading “Whites Only” at the water fountains and bathrooms to make people of color feel unwelcomed. Strategies of hatred and alienation are maintained in the DNA of the institution as well as by the sign-posters on payroll. By now, I have been at my desk long enough to have a modicum of authority, some institutional voice, and can exercise some mother’s-milk-given moxie.  At this stage, I possess less fear of reprisal or sabotage and more orneriness. My orneriness is one of the gifts of having survived into crone-hood; it is a gift from the ancestors, a pay-off of having earned the distinction of full professorship and being near retirement. As a person who has earned influence and power in this profession, I feel it my obligation to use this cachet to tell Black students that they belong and then to work until it happens.  This year, after my practice of greeting all the students of the African diaspora, I made my way to the foyer for the buffet lunch.  I was joined in the que by a tenure-track faculty colleague who is Korean. A new student came up to my colleague and, in greeting each other, they spoke in Korean.  After the brief exchange, my colleague introduced me to the student in English.  I was glad my colleague also understands the necessity of code-switching to assist Korean students in feeling that they belong, at least a little bit. Later that week, the same colleague and I went to dinner. We chose a sushi restaurant.  The maître d’ greeted us at the restaurant entrance, then sat us at a table.  He took my friend’s drink order in Korean and mine in English. Once the man left the table side – I playfully feinted insult and asked my friend why the maître d’ had not spoken to me in Korean. My friend tipped his head forward and, looking at me over his glasses, smiled. The truth telling of his culturally familiar gesture made me laugh out loud.   

Michael Rifenburg begins and ends his book with the melancholy story of a student who didn’t make it. A freshman at Auburn University, “Trey” was a star on the football field, but a dud in his classes. Rifenburg – then a master’s student working as a tutor for athletes – tries to help him, but it doesn’t work. When the Auburn football team wins a national championship a few years later, Trey has already dropped out and disappeared. Rifenburg’s book helps us understand what went wrong with Trey’s education. His ultimate argument – that writing teachers can better support student-athletes by understanding the embodied knowledge they bring from the playing field to the writing classroom – asks teachers to see the hidden talents in even those students labeled remedial. Rifenburg pushes past both the “dumb jock” stereotype and the tension that exists between academics and athletics in many colleges. He breaks down these misconceptions and boundaries to explain student-athletes as possessors of “a prior knowledge honed through bodily engagement with text and through writing practices that privilege the body as a central mode of meaning making” – a knowledge that has long gone unrecognized and untapped in the writing classroom, where the abstract practice of writing can seem disconnected from physical experience (5). As a graduate of Division I sports powerhouses like Auburn and the University of Oklahoma – where he worked in a writing center dedicated to serving student-athletes – Rifenburg is well-poised to make this argument. He was embedded for a season with the University of North Georgia’s men’s basketball team, where he attended practices and interviewed players and coaches about how they make meaning on the field. He performs detailed readings of baffling football plays from Auburn’s thick playbooks. His conclusion is that student-athletes learn complex theoretical plays through physical engagement, with the implication that this kind of learning is multi-modal, exacting, and collaborative – and potentially transferable to the traditional writing classroom. He concludes that student-athletes learn their sport through three “cognitive processes”: spatial orientation (or understanding their bodies in relationship to other bodies on the field), haptic communication (or physical touch, as when a coach re-positions a player’s hips), and scaffolded situations (or the step-by-step process through which players build up to learning a complex play). For Rifenburg, these skills are not that different from what writers do: position their ideas in relationship to other peoples’ (or spatial orientation), understand writing as a communal activity that takes place within and between groups of people (or haptic communication), and build upon many early drafts to create longer, complex texts (or scaffolded situations). He ends by prompting the reader to ask how these cross-currents between writing and playing can be leveraged to support student-athlete writers in the classroom. In the end, Rifenburg raises more questions than he answers. His description of the analogy between writing and playing sports is original and clear-sighted, but it remains only an analogy, as he stops short of offering strategies for putting this insight into action – an odd lacuna for a book that places so much emphasis on concrete, embodied experience. Indeed, I often found myself mindful of what is left out of Rifenburg’s book. While he displays deep familiarity with the field of writing studies, he does not acknowledge gender studies or disability studies, fields that are historically groundbreaking in exploring embodied meaning. Similarly, Rifenburg’s focus is exclusively on men playing high-profile, competitive, aggressive sports; do other types of athletes experience bodily knowledge differently? What of swimmers, runners, or dancers? Women athletes? Do student-athletes at small liberal arts colleges or community colleges – where athletics are not as prominent – experience a different kind of relationship between sports and academics? Rifenburg’s study opens the door for many important inquiries to follow. Ultimately, he provides a model for thinking about matter, mind, and underexplored student expertise.