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I teach biblical/theological studies. Each semester, I seek to guide students toward a deeper understanding of my conclusions concerning the major theological points of the Old Testament. I teach them that, as a result of sin, the world in which we live is not the world as God created it to be. The world is “broken.” However, the amazing story of the Old Testament shows us that God, despite the sinfulness of humanity, is making a way for humanity to be reconciled to him. The brokenness of this world is the primary reason we find difficulty present in our lives on such a regular basis. The story of the Old Testament teaches us that God uses these various kinds of difficulties to command humanity’s attention so that they turn their hearts toward him in dependence. My desire as a professor of the Old Testament is to find real connections to my students’ lives so that the Old Testament is not viewed as merely an ancient book, which has no real value to their contemporary world. And every semester, it is a battle because most of them are simply not old enough, nor do they have the life experiences that are sufficient enough, to lead them to more deeply understand the powerful truths of the Old Testament. Outside of the minor irritations of life, the majority of the freshmen or sophomore students in my courses lack that which would lead them to truly understand the theological points I am trying to make and, therefore, they can lack an interest in making the necessary connections. They still feel a little invincible and at the top of their game. Enter our global pandemic. I could not ask for a better “soft ball” to be thrown at me. It is a perfect scenario for the teachings of the Old Testament to come alive. This global pandemic has created the opportunity to openly discuss the issues confronting our world, and even the issues that confront my students, with the goal of connecting all of it to the profound theology of the Old Testament. Every situation this global pandemic brings into their lives becomes a special opportunity for them to understand the deeper realities of living in this world as we know it and all of its subsequent difficulties. Even if it does not touch their own lives in meaningful ways, they are bombarded with constant news updating them on the tragedies that other people in this world are up against. They feel it. And they are moved by it. As numerous emotional stories flow through various information platforms, it has an impact on them, making them more prepared to listen . . . and to think. So, my responsibility as a professor is to take full advantage of a crisis that I could not have planned. For my teaching, it is truly the “perfect storm” for the application of my course content. With the emergence of this global pandemic, my class is more interested in engaging the focus of my teaching. And they will be the better for it. Of course, this causes me to reflect on what might be less obvious in the everyday events of our world, which, if properly utilized, could create the same opportunity for my students to impacted. Perhaps, as a teacher, I have grown somewhat lazy in my attempts to connect the dots for my students. This has led me to think more deeply about the way I approach my course lectures. Consider the many issues that potentially confront my students on a daily basis: • At a private Christian liberal arts university, costing around $40,000 per year, this may not be an issue for my students, but one cannot help but be aware of the persons who have made a bus stop their home or walk down the street pushing their shopping cart full of their life’s possessions or who scrounge around restaurant trash cans in search of food. • Sex or human trafficking. It is difficult to believe that either sex or human trafficking could be happening in our neighbor’s home across the street or in an apartment complex in close proximity to our home, but it is possible. These “invisible” people may be closer than we think. It is a horrible issue in our world, and we can put it out of our minds. • Drug/alcohol abuse. More people will die of drug abuse in the USA than will die of this global pandemic in the year 2020. Drug abuse wrecks families, tears apart marriages, and leads to financial ruin. Students have more than likely seen the impact of this issue in one way or another. My point is that, although these issues may not directly impact my students’ lives, the global pandemic might not either. But, unlike the global pandemic, these other issues exist continuously in the world which my students and I inhabit. Oftentimes, these issues become background noise to our comfortable little worlds, but they are there. My job as a teacher is to work harder to make these connecting points when my students might be having difficulty making connection on their own. Because of this, I am thankful for the global pandemic. I know that my subject matter, the theology of the Old Testament, made it fairly easy for me to make the connections between course content and this global pandemic, but I assume that, with a little bit of thinking, you can do the same. And, if you do, it will make your course content come alive and your students will be better able to draw value from the content of your course. And, if we can do it with a global pandemic, then I bet we can do it better in the situations of everyday life. I encourage you to go for it!

The previous blog in this series focused on “long shot” (“big picture”) editing, specifically, revision tasks related to changing scenes and cutting. This final blog in the series zooms in to “medium-shot” and “close-up” editing. I realize that not all preachers have time to focus on revisions every week. While I cannot offer extra time, I can offer recommendations from filmmakers to preachers who have only 30 or 45 minutes to revise their sermon prior to Sunday morning. Medium-Shot Revisions Choose one major move/section of the sermon and focus on setting the scene with vivid language that sparks a variety of senses. The preacher does this by first visualizing the scene and providing a “thick description.” Filmmakers can be helpful guides since they make hundreds of choices in order to provide scenes that create the desired impact on the viewers. Looking carefully at their craft can hone the preacher’s skills for description. Try this exercise: Choose a scene from a favorite film. Press pause and write your responses to the following questions. Where is the scene? How do you know? What objects appear in the scene? What details give you clues about the characters in the scene? What is the major color scheme in the scene? What mood does it create? What do you think happened just prior to this scene and what is likely to happen after? What in the scene involves your hearing? your sense of smell? Now go back to the major move in the sermon and describe your scene using the same prompts. This process helps you visualize the scene so that you can describe it in a way that helps your hearers visualize it . . . without a screen. Writer Janet Burroway summarizes this well: “The first requisite of effective setting is to know it fully, to experience it mentally; and the second is to create it through significant detail.”[1] One caveat: refrain from getting carried away with details that don’t actually advance the main trajectory of the sermon. In other words, not everything from the exercise will appear in the sermon. Keep only those descriptors that move you to the next section. Close-Up Revisions We now zoom in on individual phrases and words. The art of choosing just the right word is not lost on the preacher. In fact, sometimes we agonize over just the right word. I would like to recommend that preachers spend time on the particular phrases that serve as transitions from one major move (section) to the other. Once again, films can assist. Take a segment of the film you engaged above and watch the film until you’ve identified two to three scene changes. Once you’ve done that, take a closer look at the transitions themselves. How does the filmmaker guide us from one scene to the next? Are there hints in the previous scene that we will be moving to a new scene? Or, is the scene change abrupt? If so, why? What effect does an abrupt scene change have on a viewer? Once you’ve engaged the transitions in the film, return to your sermon draft to analyze its transitions using similar questions. The first step is to make sure that there are transitions. Second, identify the roles the transitions play. In his book, The Witness of Preaching, homiletician Tom Long suggests that connectors (his word for transitions) accomplish four communication tasks: provide closure for previous segment indicate how upcoming section is related to previous anticipate the content of the next section helps listeners adopt a stance Finally, be creative and not clichéd. There are common transitions that belong specifically to the genre of sermons, for example, “In today’s gospel reading . . .” You’ve heard it. You’ve said it.  But why not be more creative, especially since when you begin to talk about Peter, we know you are referring to the section of scripture that was just read. Instead, if you are transitioning from a contemporary story to something that happened with Jesus and disciples, try this: “We weren’t the first to be in awe of Jesus’ capacity to calm the treacherous seas of life. The disciples saw it first-hand . . .”  Again, while I cannot gift preachers extra time, I hope these recommendations, gleaned from the wisdom of filmmakers and their work on the screen, might at least offer some editing possibilities if and when preachers find they have extra moments once they’ve got their “rough cut” on the page. [1] Janet Burroway, Imaginative Writing: The Elements of Craft (147).

When I talk to people about dialogical learning, they often reply, "Yes, we have great discussions in my class." But discussion and dialogue, as learning methods, are different things. And then there's conversation. Conversation too can be a sound learning method in formal theological education. Conversation Theory, developed by Gordon Pask, originated from his work in cybernetics and attempts to explain learning in both living organisms and machines. Pask's fundamental idea was that learning occurs through conversations about a subject matter make knowledge explicit. Conversations can be conducted at a number of different levels: natural language (general discussion), object languages (for discussing the subject matter), and metalanguages (for talking about learning/language). In order for conversation to facilitate learning, Pask argued that the subject matter you are teaching should be represented in the form of entailment structures, that is, showing the relationship between two sentences where the truth of one (A) requires the truth of the other (B). The critical method of learning when using conversation theory is "teachback" in which one person teaches another what they have learned. According to Pask there are two different types of learning strategies in conversation: serialists who progress through an entailment structure in a sequential fashion (as in a story narrative structure), and holists who look for higher order relations. The suitability of Conversation theory to theological education is self-evident. Conversation theory, for example, is applicable in a formal theological education context as a process for learning in supervised ministry. Through directed conversations students learn from their experience, and from peers, as they interact to make explicit what they are learning in their ministerial contexts. Conversation theory is a suitable process for the integration of concepts learned in the academic context (the classroom with a subject-matter focus) and their praxis in the supervision context. Conversation theory can be applied to solicit deeper and explicit learning from an immersion experience in a different cultural context. The three pedagogical principles in conversation theory are: To learn a subject matter, students must learn the relationships among the concepts. Explicit explanation or manipulation of the subject matter facilitates understanding (e.g., use of teachback technique). Individuals differ in their preferred manner of learning relationships (serialists versus holists). One advantage of the online asynchronous learning environment is that the conversation "slows down," and this allows the instructor time for analysis of student responses and fosters more intentional pedagogical responses that promote deeper dialogue and conversation. To learn more about conversation theory, see Gordon Pask, Conversation, Cognition, and Learning (New York: Elsevier, 1975).

Staying connected to students will be very important in the coming months–for their sense of well-being, for their academic success, and for their persistence. Managing student needs and expectations while teaching remotely can be more challenging than in the traditional classroom where students might catch you before or after class. Students might be in different time zones, have responsibilities that make it hard for them to participate in synchronous activities (in real time), or they may lack the technological capability necessary to connect. You will want to consider both synchronous and asynchronous options to make sure that all students have equitable access to your support.   Asynchronous Options  Despite the asynchronous nature of communication in many online courses, students often expect an immediate reply to their questions without considering the time of day they posted, or the possible complexity of the reply. One method for effectively addressing this concern is to clearly establish virtual office hours and a policy on when and how you will respond (e.g., within 24 hours).  • Forums are a good way to respond to students if questions are relevant to more than one student and do not require confidentiality. On Canvas, you might occasionally post a discussion prompt such as “What questions do you have about the upcoming assignment?” You may just tell students that you will respond within a certain period of time. This reduces multiple email responses to the same question and also archives the questions and responses for later access. • Toward the end of a challenging unit, you might ask students to submit to you their “muddiest point”–what is it they still do not understand or are confused by. You could ask them to email you or answer anonymously through a Qualtrics survey. This allows you to respond in one post, video, or email to address the biggest challenges students are having with the material. • You can also ask students to post their questions about the material in a Google doc or discussion board in Canvas and let them respond to each other’s questions if they know the answers. This helps create connections and increases peer learning. In this strategy, you may want to wait to chime in until a pre-communicated period of time has passed so that you don’t inhibit participation.  • Email can also work quite well, though you may want to designate a specific, consistent subject line (e.g., “Question about CHEM 100”) to keep track of the topics. You may be able to respond to the common questions or concerns at one time in a Q&A format.  Synchronous Options   Zoom, WebEx, and the good old-fashioned phone can work for real-time meetings. However, you will want to poll your students to determine possible times for everyone.   • Synchronous office hours are sometimes an individual affair, but they also can be for groups when the focus is a need common to many students. This can be more fun and will save you a lot of time! In Zoom you have the option of setting up a waiting room where you invite students in one-by-one. You can have students make individual appointments with you, or in the case of a larger class, assign them to come in groups. You can also create “common concerns office hours” where all students can elect to join. • One way of determining common concerns: At the end of a virtual class, you can ask students to post their “muddiest point”using the whiteboard in Zoom or through Qualtrics to preserve anonymity. Or you can give them a few minutes to put their questions in the chat. You can then offer virtual office hours to respond to themes that emerge. You can also meet with groups about projects, conduct reviews before an exam, or host a drop-in Q&A–remember to record the session for those who can’t make it. • Providing a contact telephone number is another option, although instructors should clearly designate appropriate calling times, as well as how and when they will respond to voice mail messages. For some students, this might be their best way to join you. Students will often be working in the virtual classroom at all hours of the day or night, so maintaining clearly understood communication channels is essential for the ongoing success of the online course.  Some additional things to plan for  • The times during the semester when students will need more support, e.g., a week before an assignment is due or an exam will be held.  • Whether you want students to drop in or schedule an appointment (in Zoom there is a virtual waiting room, and you can let a student or group of students in at their scheduled time)? 

We’re in the middle of a pandemic with no clear end in sight. At the same time, many of us are taking a crash course in teaching online that we didn’t sign up for, and we’re handling it with varying degrees of success. Given all that, what should we focus on during the remaining weeks of our classes? Start by taking your students into account. How are they doing? I’m at a small, Catholic college, and I’m teaching required, first-year general education classes this semester. My students were OK for the first two weeks of online classes, but they seem worn out now. They tell me that their professors were understanding at first, but then they returned to business as normal, creating a pileup of papers and exams just as the students were getting more tired and discouraged. I didn’t like hearing that. For this semester, please, don’t worry about covering content and let’s lower our academic standards whenever it seems appropriate. Let’s focus on what our students need. So, what do our students need right now? Most important, they need our compassion and patience, and they need simple explanations of critical information. Even my stronger students are struggling to retain information because they are anxious, unfocused, and tired. Many of them worry needlessly and endlessly. One girl has asked me five times whether I’ll punish her for her intermittent Internet connectivity problems. I’ve reassured her repeatedly, but I suspect she’s still worried. And all that worrying is making her even more tired and less able to learn. I now spend the first few minutes of each class checking in, reassuring them, and reviewing basic information like course registration dates. With some trepidation, I promise that their other professors are reasonable people, and I coach them on how to talk to them. I use anonymous surveys to surface their concerns about their classes and the college. We discuss stress management and try to calm down. I’ve ordered all of them to take at least one full day off over Easter. I reassure, and explain again and again. I’ve lowered my academic expectations. When my students struggle with understanding basic instructions, it’s counterproductive to assign them long and difficult readings. So, I shorten the readings, and I use videos or pictures instead whenever possible. Comparing Michelangelo’s “Creation of Adam” to Harmonia Rosales’ reinterpretation, which presents God as a black woman, allowed us to discuss many of the same issues as the feminist reading I had on my syllabus. And dropping the reading made my students just grateful enough to engage with the images when I asked. I’m also revising the content of the last part of my course. As instructors in philosophy, theology, and religious studies, we are well positioned to have existential conversations with our students. After all, such questions are at the core of our disciplines! I’m focusing on questions at the intersection of my background and the current moment: Is happiness a choice, or do our circumstances determine whether we can be happy? What can we know and what should we do in the absence of certainty? Who do we trust? Why does God allow suffering? Does suffering make us better and stronger? How can religion be a source of strength? What about people who don’t believe in God? I’m inviting my students to draw on their experiences in their papers. They are crafting arguments about why God might allow the COVID-19 crisis and about how their experiences are making them stronger (or not). They are considering ways in which the burdens, yet again, fall disproportionally on some groups and asking how that might complicate the picture. They reflect upon how the crisis is affecting their own faith and on the possibility of staying happy and resilient in a crisis. I’m drawing on texts I’ve already read and questions I’ve thought about before. I’m too tired right now to invent anything new! Your version will be different, focusing on your questions rather than mine, using texts you’ve read, movies you’ve seen, and art that has moved you. Experiment. Invite the students into a conversation that uses your discipline to help make sense of their experiences right now. But don’t drive yourself crazy. If nothing comes to mind, stick to a gentler version of your original plan. Be kind to your students, but also to yourself.

Quarantine strips life down to the bare essentials. My work gets me out of bed each morning and through each day. Admittedly, before quarantine, the demands of work structured most of my days and a significant portion of my life. The difference is that during quarantine I am more willing to admit that I have been reduced to my work with little else left that is life-giving. Facing this reality allows me to face the truth that I have been living through a series of stressors. My life over the past five years has been marked by transitions: relocation to a new city, a new administrative role, a divorce, co-parenting arrangements for pre-teen, now teen boys, purchase of a new home and the attendant address changes, packing and unpacking. These were papered over by a full professional life packed with teaching, academic writing, professional conferencing, mentoring, administration, leadership in my various academic groups. These stressors built to a full boil with the death of my brother in mid-March and the experience of having to view his burial via YouTube. Quarantine has brought escape routes and pathways for deep connections that the hectic pace of academic life under “normal” circumstances would have eliminated with the constant demands for productivity and keeping on top of schedules. Quarantine has reduced my work from its tangible realities to greater screen time that facilitate the escape habits I have honed over the course of my career. Teaching online is not entirely new to me; what is new to me is teaching from the space where the majority of my life and critical life moments are lived out in front of screens and through pixilated images. As waves of grief have come over me in the past weeks, I recognize how work forces me to acknowledge and name my teaching as a coping strategy. The routines of the week require me to perform and to show up for class times, respond to discussion posts, read and grade student writing, attend meetings. I pushed myself through with sufficient practice of showing up and pretending competence. I now see that teaching during these times sits within a simulated world. Simulation has always fed my need to escape, as it has for many other persons. Simulating grief, pain, loss, and stress can only go so far, for as Bessel van der Kolk reminds us, “the body keeps the score.” Teaching can be a means of pretending things are ordinary. Making minimal changes to the syllabus, expanding topics to take account of the current context, or adjusting grade expectations. All these adaptations are coping mechanisms for me to tell myself, and my students, that we were carrying on with the ordinary events of academic life. In these online spaces, we facilitate a grand simulacra and escape to familiar worlds of knowledge and competence. I am fine with the escape only because it is a means of survival at this time. I recognize all too well that the theories of online education presume that the digital world serves as the adjunct to the flesh and blood realities of teachers and learners. Now we are truly in flipped classrooms where flesh and blood encounters form less and less of our daily realities and the digital becomes the default reality. In these days of disconnection, I am finding that other forms of social gatherings in online settings need to be named as pale reflections of the real thing. Part of my grief is wishing I had been next to my parents and siblings as we said goodbye to our older brother. I long for real connections, preferring the comfort of a friend’s voice over an email expressing condolences. I long to be in real conversations with a worshipping community, and not listening to someone talk at me through a screen. These real connections that formed the parts of our real-world communities are a long way off. Until then, I face the reality that I am my best human connection. In normal times I might find this thought too self-absorbed. If disconnection gets me to fall in love with me again, to love the parts of me that are energized by teaching, to love fiercely the liberative work of my academic research, then I am achieving what Derek Walcott refers to as loving “again the stranger who was your self.” Now I am thinking of ways to teach through my body and my responsiveness to my body’s pain, my vulnerability, and longings. This means inhabiting biblical characters with greater empathy and asking students to stretch their imaginations away from orthodox inspired interpretations of biblical texts to find real connections with the feelings, fears, and experiences of biblical texts that in many ways have been formed in the midst of trauma. I’m developing exercises that ask students to read texts as they look through their windows at the world they mostly experience through imagined senses and translate those experiences into looking at the ancient world in the Bible as if peering at them standing at the window of their homes. I am learning how to harness the genius of D-Nice’s Club Quarantine parties that call people together around a screen event lived out in bodily movements in individual homes. To teach online now not only means attending to the onscreen activities, the strategies of well-crafted pixilated pedagogy, but also doing the hard work to pay attention to what happens offline with us as teachers and with our students.

Discussion forums in online classrooms are unfortunately named. The name evokes just talking about stuff. This can be a good use of the discussion forum; dialogue is an important part of higher education. The opportunity to test and develop ideas in conversation with trusted colleagues, both classmates and professors—yes, the discussion forum is a place to do that. But, I find I often get into a rut in these forums. I introduce and assign readings, then ask a series of questions to jumpstart a conversation. At its worst, this is about making sure that students are doing the reading and making some sense of it, a kind of accountability busy work. At its best, this is a way to integrate and work critically together with those materials in ways that help them come alive and become true conversation partners for the developing wisdom of my students. I am always looking for other ways to better use these dialogical spaces with students. One of the metaphors that has been helpful for me is to use these spaces for students to “curate” materials for one another. By “curate,” I mean something like this: “to collect, select and present information or items such as pictures, video, music, etc. for people to use or enjoy, using your professional or expert knowledge.” For example, wise curating is what Maria Popova does in her excellent podcast and website, “Brain Pickings” (https://www.brainpickings.org/). Curating in discussion forums can take all sorts of forms, depending on your purposes and the disciplined knowledges you are attempting to teach. Here are some of the ways I have used it as a religious educator and practical theologian: • Curating Examples from Daily Life: When I am reading dense theoretical pieces with students (imagine Pierre Bourdieu or Paulo Freire), I invite them to find a website, image, or current event that illustrates one of the key theoretical concepts in the reading. This brings about a great deal of reflection on the concepts as the students try to imagine what might serve as a useful example of the concept in action. They often consider and reject many concepts as they try to find the one they will share, thus generating a more careful review of the reading. They post a link to the event or website and explain the concept that they see it illustrating to their colleagues. This has the subtle effect of helping them imagine that engaging these theories is not to demonstrate their competence for a grade, but to gain tools to better understand how the world works. It also serves as a test for the theories as we begin to see which ones have heuristic value making sense of daily life. • Curating Images: When we are working in my practical theology class on forming theological questions grounded in human experience, I invite students to offer a photographic image from their home or neighborhood that raises significant theological questions for them. As the collection of images are curated, they begin to see how questions are related to particular contexts and communities, as well as begin to think about what makes a question theological at all. Their colleagues’ reflections on their images generate a range of different theological questions and demonstrate the role of perspectival framing not just in the answering of questions, but also in their initial framing. • Curating Practices: In a religious education class I ask students to search the web for examples of contemporary religious educational practice happening inside or outside of communities of faith. They share the examples and analyze them, naming their strengths and limitations and how they might imagine using them in their own practice as educators. This not only gives them practice in identifying and analyzing resources, but also expands all of our knowledge about what is currently happening in the practice of the field and how it relates to the academic texts we have been reading. • Curating Stereotypes, or Common Misunderstandings and Misrepresentations: In youth ministry classes, I have students curate examples of the ways that adolescents are stereotyped and used as tropes in popular culture. They then take apart those stereotypes and tropes and compare them to what we’ve gleaned from developmental, sociological, and cultural studies of adolescence we have been reading. This enables them to identify where the tropes may have roots in those theories, but also where they have become distorted. Curating would serve different purposes in different disciplines, and I am sure you have creative ideas here. Students might curate examples of a particular Biblical text or historical event in visual art, poetry, literature, or song and talk about the interpretive choices made in that artwork. They might collect examples of practices from religious traditions in popular culture, or on YouTube, and analyze how they are represented in those forums in relation to the academic interpretations you are reading about those same practices. They might curate helpful video lectures or social media posts of an author you are reading, giving them a chance to listen to their embodied voices and discover something of the human behind the academic work you are reading. They might find examples of how historical events that you are studying are depicted on websites intended for elementary or middle schoolers and talk about the implications of historiographical choices made in those settings. They might curate academic articles that build on the theory you are reading in an area that is relevant to their own vocational path. The beautiful thing about online discussion forums is that curating, posting a photo or link, and then writing a brief analysis of the artifact, is very easy to construct. It leverages the investigative power of the students and allows them to follow their interests, integrate knowledge, engage in application and analysis, and discover connection between the subject matter and the broader world in which they live.

It isn’t over. “It,” of course, is the Covid-19 crisis that has moved students, faculty and staff off our physical campuses, moved learning to online platforms, and disrupted the normal rhythms of an academic year. What is certain right now is what is not happening: honors ceremonies, graduations, conferences and research days, sports, dances, and chance encounters with friends and colleagues on walks across the quad. Everything else is uncertain, unbounded, unknowable in its detail, and often frightening, especially as this crisis is malleable and continues to unfold globally. It is an anxious time. That anxiety is in our [Zoom, Google, WebX, Canvas] classrooms, and despite not having its own picture box, it takes up a lot of space. This leaves faculty in a quandary: should we address the anxiety in the room, potentially inviting difficult or emotional reactions from students, or should we turn away from it, focusing as much as possible on business as usual, even as we acknowledge that nothing is usual right now. I have written before about using dialogic practices to meet disruption, arguing that structuring classes for curiosity and genuine encounter across difference gives students the tools they need to lean into the wobble that comes from meeting something new or strange. Teaching curiosity, holding up listening as a value, and giving people the tools to do it better creates brave spaces where students can genuinely explore themselves, others, and new ideas. These are skills we all need right now. They allow us to invite the kinds of conversations and reflection that can recognize anxiety and then nudge it toward connection, purpose, and hope. What does this look like? Last year, after the Tree of Life synagogue and New Zealand mosque shootings, it meant taking time in class to recognize those events, and then offering a path to agency in the face of horror. I gave each student a 3 x 5 notecard and invited them to finish the sentence “I can . . . ” on one side, and “I will. . . ” on the other. I didn’t collect the cards. Some students report still having them, and one recently called the experience formative in the way she has come to find purpose in the face of overwhelming events. Right now, it means inviting students to reflect on when they have met challenges before, relationships and connections that are important to them, specific things that the virus has changed, and opportunities that their new situations provide. Doing this has allowed my students to realize that this is not the first time they have successfully met the challenges disruption brings, and to find sources of inner strength and social support as they recall those who helped them before. Asking students to name one thing that has changed for them narrows generalized anxiety, making it concrete and approachable. One student mentioned that “bumping into people” in Zoom meetings, while a poor substitute for the cafeteria encounters they missed, did help fill that gap. Asking about opportunities leads students to think about purpose and even hope in the face of loss. Students talk about the gift of time with siblings and parents, slower and less regulated days, and new grading standards that are letting them dig more deeply into subjects they love. Taking the time to lean into the discomfort of the current situation also creates and reinforces the social connections that keep the demons of anxiety at bay. I’m on research leave this semester, but invited students I taught in the last year to a Covid-19 dialogue hosted on Zoom late one Friday afternoon. A handful came. We had a genuine and moving conversation using the questions outlined above, and before we dispersed, they asked if we could do it again, every Friday. We can, and we will. This is what hope, connection, and community look like in the face of Covid-19. They’re still here, and so are we. Suggestions for check-ins (choose one question and invite students to reflect on it for a minute, then report back in one breath): • Tell us about one thing that’s made you feel rooted in the last few days. • Talk about one person you’re supporting right now. • What’s the best thing you decided to do this week? • Bring an object from where you are to share. What’s meaningful about it? For longer discussions: • Tell a story about a time you overcame a challenging situation. • What strengths did you draw on? Who supported you then? • Tell a story that would help us understand what’s changed for you as a result of the virus? • What hopes or opportunities might you see in your new situation?

The debate about whether or not to engage in online education is over. However, the journey to doing online education well is just beginning. This video points our the reasons we should be embracing online education. It also gives a few pointers about one of the most popular forms of professor presentation, the screencast.   Watch the screencast at this link.

In the last few weeks, the undergrads I teach have responded to moving off campus and courses shifting online with a mixture of confusion and sadness. While their generation is well equipped to utilize digital resources, the sudden dismantling of our daily community and rhythms deeply challenged all of us. I have been grateful to find that course content and online strategies have permitted us to connect with and support one another in the uncertain, liminal space of seated courses forced into online venues. By fortunate coincidence, my GenEd class on the Psalms was scheduled to discuss post-exilic psalms during our first week of online instruction. Through theological engagement with Georg Simmel’s essay “The Stranger” and Catherine Brun and Anita Fábos’ article “Making Homes in Limbo? A Conceptual Framework,” it was my goal that my students develop a greater understanding of the human experience of migratory displacement—and ultimately respond to that understanding with empathy and action.[1] In previous semesters of this course, some students found relating to migrants a foreign idea; this term, however, found us in the midst of a very productive and personal conversation around the concept of “home,” as students grappled with their own recent experiences of displacement and isolation. Not only did I witness students thinking through course materials in a more committed manner than usual, but I also emerged from this week feeling like I know my students individually and collectively much better. In this way, current circumstances and the shift online have been gifts that enrichen the connection this class had already established in person. Here are some specific strategies that I found facilitated connection for my undergraduates this past week: Building on in-person connection: I created discussion groups composed of students who had regularly gravitated to one another in the seated classroom. We utilized these discussion groups in directed discussion forums and for Zoom breakout room exercises. Students provided feedback that interaction with known peers helped motivate them to complete work, and encouraged them to support one another. While I do like to mix up discussion groups from time to time, current shifting circumstances have made it valuable to spend time in the presence of trustworthy and familiar faces. Developing new collaborative projects: In conjunction with some individual assignments, I found that my students responded positively when we used the Zoom breakout room time for them to collaboratively craft responses to discussion questions in a shared GoogleDoc. The process of creating a shared product helped them to focus this time and consider together how they might reflect their individual viewpoints in the document. When I briefly dropped into each group, I was able to answer individual questions regarding execution of the assignment and to discuss some of the content that was on their minds. In addition to this synchronous collaboration, I found it effective to have students respond to digital “presentations” asynchronously in their end-of-the-week reflections. Earlier in the week, presenters had posted their creative renderings of selected psalms to class forums, and in students’ individual reflections at the end of the week, I asked them to explain how they connected those presentations to the week’s readings and discussion. By referring to their peers’ creative projects, it gave the sense that students were interacting with each other’s thoughts while processing the course materials. Applying course learning to present experiences: The final piece of their individual weekly reflections was to relate the discussion of displacement and “home” to their current experiences in self-isolation. While they had been connecting to the material throughout the week through the readings, video lecture, presentations, and Zoom discussion, most of them went above and beyond the requirements of this reflection because they wanted to work through their present experiences. They demonstrated an ability to empathize (yes!) with the idea of “Homes in Limbo” from the Brun and Fábos article, and shared with me about their lives in ways they hadn’t before. I believe they felt supported simply because I asked them how they are thinking about “home” during this time—and I was honored by the raw and open responses they provided. As we look to not only convey information through online education, but also to continue forming students theologically, I wonder how else we might creatively connect with our students in the midst of these unique circumstances. Even if our methods are not perfect, the students certainly appreciate any efforts on our parts to see them, hear them, and respond to them. I hope I can continue to share with my students how they are transforming me, as a teacher and as a person, while we go forward into this liminal space together. [1] Simmel, “Der Fremde”; Brun and Fábos, “Making Homes in Limbo? A Conceptual Framework.”