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When your course unexpectedly pivots to an online format, students will likely feel a lot of uncertainty, and it’s hard to know how best to approach such an abrupt transition with them. Whether conducted synchronously or asynchronously, the first remote meeting is a chance for you to help students process these changes while maintaining transparency and empathy. Consider incorporating some of the following ideas:  Communicate and acknowledge the difficulty of the situation.  By the time your course meets, students will likely have experienced upheaval, distress, and disappointment over the past couple weeks. Additionally, you may have been scrambling to adjust to teaching remotely, and your personal life may now be intersecting with your professional life in complex and challenging ways. Acknowledge to students that this is a time when anxiety is running high for a number of reasons, understandably so, as these circumstances are not normal. Recognize that, yes, the transition to a remotely taught course will be bumpy, but you and the students will be navigating it together. Emphasize that this process will require empathy and patience with one another, and it can be a true partnership.   Conduct a mindfulness exercise.   Given the circumstances, it may be hard for students to make an immediate mental shift and be able to focus on your course. Give students a few minutes to become present in the moment. A short interval of stillness, a breathing exercise, or a moment for students to “empty their minds” are all ways to ground students and prepare them for the work of learning. For more guidance, see this resource on Mindfulness in the Classroom.  Clearly communicate any new expectations.  If you have already made decisions about adjustments to the syllabus, such as revised learning objectives, assessments, schedule, or course policies, explain them and provide them in writing.  Explain how students can expect the course to be run on a day-to-day basis. It can also be helpful to establish netiquette expectations around appropriate self-presentation, guidelines for engagement, sharing airtime, etc. If you plan to involve students in making any of these decisions, communicate that as well, and make time for that process.  Give students a chance to reconnect with you and one another.  Though it might be more difficult, it is possible to maintain social connection in a remote learning environment, and that social connection is especially critical in a time such as this. You might ask:  How are you feeling right now about the course/semester/this transition online?  What do you think you will need to have a successful rest of the semester?   What do you remember struggling with the most where we left off?   If you intend to hold your course synchronously over Zoom, you could have students respond over the chat, using the whiteboard tool, or in pairs/small groups using breakout sessions. If you are conducting your course mostly asynchronously, students could share their thoughts using the discussion board in the LMS.  Try conducting a small portion of class as you plan to conduct it day-to-day.  Particularly if you plan to hold synchronous sessions, you could allot some time to try a bit of “normal” instruction, including testing some of the technology you plan to use to ensure that everyone is comfortable with it. Since you and the students may be using certain tools for the first time, the first meeting can be a good time to do a trial run and iron out any issues that immediately arise.  Have students complete a pre-rest-of-semester survey.  Because this may be a major transition, it can be valuable to check in with each student about their individual needs or concerns. Have students complete a survey, which can be set up in the LMS. Questions might include:  Are there barriers or challenges to your participation in synchronous (in real time) meetings that you would like me to know about?    How proficient do you feel with the online learning environment/educational technology tools we’ll be using? Please provide your input/opinion on revising [insert course policy/assessment/course expectation here].  Where do you feel you need support at this juncture, academically or otherwise?  Is there anything else you want me to know?   Remember that this is an extraordinary situation.  You are not developing online courses, which involves a careful and deliberate process of choosing pedagogies and appropriate tools—rather, you are keeping the trains running. 

The current pandemic has caused faculties to scramble to move classroom courses online. For many instructors, these will be their first fully online course. Having taught online for over 22 years, it's been interesting to observe the steep learning curve many are experiencing. Here are the eight most common errors I see in the current scramble to go online. Trying to "translate" a classroom course to the online environment. While I'd argue that there's no such thing as "online pedagogy" (there's only good pedagogy and poor pedagogy), classroom and online are different experiences that require attention to the conditions of learning distinct to each. Attempts to re-create the classroom learning experience, methods, and modes to the online environment is a basic error. Teaching online requires a "start over" in your course design, though not necessarily a change in student learning outcomes. Applying wrong metrics to the online experience. For example, many professors are wondering how to take attendance, or figuring out what counts for attendance. Attendance is a rather archaic and almost meaningless metric left over from the industrial age model of schooling. A better metric is student engagement. Becoming a talking head. It's bad enough students have to put up with a lot of poor classroom lectures. Now they have to suffer through countless hours of talking heads as professors videotape themselves "lecturing." I've been teaching online for 22 years. I've never once used Zoom in an online course or posted taped lectures. Forcing students to watch a taped disembodied talking head almost guarantees student disengagement, especially if we fail to appreciate the liability of transactional distance in the online environment. If the content of your lecture is that important, give your students a manuscript or your lecture notes to study. Posting video lectures over seven minutes long. The lecture method takes on a different function in the online environment. When instructors ask me how they can video tape and post their lectures online I ask, "Why would you want to duplicate the most maligned and least effective teaching method and pretend the online environment is a ‘classroom’ when it offers so much greater opportunity for student engagement?" The question to ask is, "What is the pedagogical function of this video?" The most effective functions are: a short introduction, an explication, or a demonstration. Assessing the wrong thing. I see some schools wanting to assess whether students "like" the online experience. What students "like" is beside the point of the educational. A common student comment on course evaluation for online courses is, "I would have preferred to have taken this course in the classroom." The response is, "How do you know?" Ask those students if they learned what the course was intended to provide, and they'll likely say, "Yes!" Assess the right thing: evidence of student learning and achievement of the course student learning outcomes. One can also evaluate the effectiveness of the course design: structure, scope, flow, alignment with program goals, etc. Ignoring aesthetics and design when creating an online course. Figuring out your course should not be an assignment. Your course should be designed so intuitively and aesthetically pleasing so the student perceives, intuits, and understands immediately what they are seeing and what is expected of them. Your students don't read a user manual or instructions when playing complex video games—they can immediately perceive what the game is about and what they are supposed to do. A well-designed website does not provide an orientation to new visitors. Your course should be clean, intuitive, and logical in design (and that includes not adding anything that does not directly support the learning outcomes). Attempting to go for coverage rather than depth. Many classroom instructors fail to appreciate that because online learning requires a higher level of student engagement, they need to reduce the amount of coverage they usually attempt in a classroom course—-which usually is way too much as it is. A good rule of thumb: cut the content coverage by half and focus on student engagement that (1) helps students achieve a learning outcomes and (2) provides evidence of learning. Failing to ask for help. Most faculty members are used to the silo-oriented isolated nature of academia. Traditionally, they develop their courses alone. At most they may share their course syllabi with colleagues on their faculties or departments, though more often than not they are seen mostly by the dean, registrar, and library services. Teaching online, especially for first time instructors, is a great opportunity to be more collaborative in our approach to teaching. Ask for help. Experienced online instructors, your school's instructional designers, and numerous online teaching support groups are ready and happy to help you make your online course the best it can be.

When we engage our teaching world online, let me encourage you to start where you are.  It is not about the tech, gear and gadgets.  It is about vision, imagination and design. In this vlog I show you my setup, my online classroom and how I think about this space. This is not a “how to video” but rather it is a glimpse into my inner world.  I want to invite you to dream about your space, your vision for online teaching and how this might look for you.  My goal is to inspire you to think deliberately about your presence and vision for your online classroom. [su_vimeo url="https://vimeo.com/403354389" title="My Online Classroom"]

We live in a world that tries to manage risk, to assess whether this decision or that decision is more or less risky, better or worse for the long term good of the institution, more or less likely to lead to student complaints, and more. And we make plans to mitigate risks based on knowledge and experience. Then, the crisis we are not prepared for appears. And if the crisis occurs in the midst of a semester, teachers rightly find themselves asking, what does it look like to teach in the midst of a crisis? There is no "one size fits all" response in the midst of a crisis. Each school is different. Teachers are different. Students respond in their own ways. Some classes are small, some large, some medium. Some students and teachers have lots of experience online and others none. In addition, there are a variety of emotions that may be present such as fear, anxiety, lethargy, depression, panic, and worry to name a few. It is important for teachers to recognize that both the teacher and the student/s may be experiencing challenging emotions that they have to navigate while functioning in an upended life situation. Our awareness of these situations can help us as we think about teaching strategies during a crisis situation. These strategies are familiar. First, invite the whole self to be present in the classroom. When my institution moved to the fully online environment, I set up a forum for each class and invited students to “check-in” with both myself and fellow students. They were invited to share how they were doing, how they were feeling, and how they had been impacted by the coronavirus crisis. I gave a little credit for completing the forum to show students that I really wanted to hear from them. I also shared some of my own concerns with them so they could see that I was also impacted by this crisis. I plan to continue this “check-in” strategy over the weeks ahead since the impacts of the crisis will be felt for months to come. There is no use denying the presence of such a crisis. Second, communicate clearly. In the first week that we were online, I sent out several announcements sharing information as it was made known to me. For example, I let the class know it had shifted from face-to-face to online and indicated when I would send out more information. Two days later I emailed them with the class outline for the week and clear instructions about how to access and complete that week’s class. On our normal class meeting day, I reminded them that my TA and I would be available via Zoom for an optional session where they could chat or ask questions. Third, change assignments to fit the crisis. For example, in a class on the book of Acts I asked students to analyze the speeches in the book of Acts in small zoom groups and then talk about the message the scattered disciples took with them as they left Jerusalem. I then asked them to think about what message they wanted to take with them as they had been scattered from the seminary to their homes. And, I asked them to think about how they would communicate this message in the time of social distancing. In a different class, I changed a requirement for service hours to an opportunity to write on the early church’s response to plague and connect that writing with our own situation. Finally, aim for an encouraging, empathetic tone. Creating a tone that encourages both students and teachers, reminding us of both frailty and hope, and calling us to our best selves will strengthen the community of the course. Allowing many to reach out and uphold each other in the midst of challenging times means the burden is not on just one person (usually the teacher). In this way, teachers can model for the future leaders we are teaching how to be people who name their emotions/vulnerabilities, recognize the variety of responses people have to crisis, communicate clearly, work to connect the current crisis with current learning, and reach out to support one another. Which strategies are you using to teach during the time of coronavirus?

When we first move into online classroom spaces, we often miss the dynamic energy of gathered bodies in a familiar location. We lose the immediate gratification of watching in real time as new knowledge “clicks” for students in discussions and class activities. Online classrooms may initially feel sterile, artificial, and indistinguishable from one another in our learning management system. With time and experience in teaching in online classrooms, we may begin to reconsider how a traditional residential classroom is also an artificial space. Residential education occurs on the educational institution’s “turf,” asking students to put their relational connections, participation in the economy, and other vocational expressions on hold to enter into these four walls to be formed and informed. Traditional schooling is an attempt to engage life wisdom from across generations and cultures in a simulated environment that speeds knowledge acquisition and re-organizes it more efficiently from how we might naturally encounter it in life. There is nothing “natural” about a classroom with 12-200 students in it all trying to learn the same things at the same time, regardless of their existing experience or knowledge. What feels “traditional” about this education is actually a factory model of education largely adopted during the industrial revolution for the sake of increasing access to and efficiency of education for the masses. To be certain, online classrooms have many of the same constructed elements. However, they are also more porous than synchronous residential learning experiences. You may experience this in the plethora of Zoom meetings that are happening right now in the midst of staying-at-home as a part of Covid 19 mitigation. Suddenly, you see your students in their home contexts, sometimes with roommates, children, spouses, or pets wandering into the picture. The students’ home contexts become a part of the teaching and learning milieu in more pressing ways when they stay embedded in them. While they are still engaging with a community seeking knowledge, they are also embedded in other relationships and contexts where that knowledge can be tested and integrated on a daily basis. Another of the unique features of online spaces is the capacity for immediate linkage to communities and resources far beyond those of the “walled-in” residential classroom. Opportunities to have students video-conference with scholars or practitioners around the world, curate their own examples or applications of course content drawn from internet resources and their local context, or interact with external media or images related to the course are easy to arrange in online classrooms. This allows course content and the contexts in which knowledge is situated to expand in ways sometimes even beyond faculty expectations and expertise. By asking students to take the insights they are gaining into other settings or to make connections with external resources, faculty may find ways to make online interactions more analytical, more relevant to students’ final vocational destinations, and more engaging for both students and faculty. Additionally, porosity means that students can share learnings from the course through online forums from Twitter feeds to YouTube videos by linking to these in the online classroom. This practice serves as a way to test out ideas in other publics and to help students understand that ultimately this knowledge is not for regurgitation in a classroom setting for their instructor to judge but rather for integration and application in other settings. The longer I have taught online, the more I have become reluctant to serve as the primary audience for student written work. While I always read student work and provide the best feedback my own expertise and experiences with the material can provide, I find that they are better and more committed scholars when they know that what they are creating will find its way into a group who can benefit from what they are creating, whether their class colleagues or some other part of their community. Student papers are remarkably stronger when they know they will share them with their classroom colleagues or other external audiences in comparison to the ones that they will just dash off at the last minute to submit to me in order to complete an assignment. This strategy improves student formation by positioning them more regularly as persons whose knowledge impacts not only their experience but serves other communities as well.  The space for collaborative exchange between students is so much easier to engage in porous online settings where students can share resources and insights easily through links and public postings. There are times when the porosity of online classrooms can be concerning. It is helpful to protect some spaces where mistakes can be made and opinions shared that are within relationships of mutual accountability rather than in the general public. And in theological education where I teach, students are often accountable to ordination boards and hiring committees who may not yet need to witness their growth and development as they encounter new ideas. Some of those boundaries can be maintained in online classrooms to the extent that they can in the public space of a residential classroom. But the possibility of regularly opening up the classroom to the world outside the four walls is an engaging gift of online education.

Death is all around us. The palpable feeling of impending loss, grief, dread, doom, and despair has gripped our families, our nation and the world. With each passing day, there are increased numbers of positive diagnoses, hospitalizations, and loss. It feels as if we have been snatched up into the sci-fi novels of Octavia Butler.  We are on the inside of an apocalyptic narrative. We, the global community, in this pandemic moment, are walking through the valley of the shadow of death.  Mental health professionals are part of the teams of experts who are working tirelessly during this pandemic. Societal shuddering and quarantine have meant an increase in domestic violence, self-harm, and child abuse. There has been an uptick in all the forms of mental illness. Sustained periods of terror, trauma, and isolation shred our imaginations. The pressure of this moment will drive some people mad. The corporate value of rugged individualism is not serving us well in this moment. The myths of the lone ranger, the solitary winner, the underdog triumphing against all odds, are box office favorites. In the past, we have preferred the lone achiever, we have favored the one winner, and have envied the one, most prized, beauty. In this moment of pandemic, the ideologies which promote “I, me, mine” are failing us. Slowly we are awakening to, and becoming desperate for, “we, y’all, us, everybody.” The pandemic will be interrupted by a vaccine and/or by a cocktail of medications which will more rapidly quell symptoms. In the meantime, let us steady our fear, anxiety, hopelessness and despair by revitalizing our notion of community. We know all life affects all other life. Martin L. King, scholar and activist, said it this way, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” The poignancy of this truth was made vivid for me and my students when we traveled to West Africa. Many communities in West Africa welcomed me and my students many times over many years. While learning in the homes and schools of othered persons, my students and I were immersed in the life saving and unfamiliar practices of ubuntu. Ubuntu is a communal value of connectedness, radical care, hospitality and inclusion. Ubuntu means simply – “all-of-we-are-one.”  It means, “I cannot know myself apart from you. And you cannot know yourself apart from me.” I means, “If we are not, I am not.” When Ghanaians greet a friend in the market place the question is not “How are you?” This question, in the practice of ubuntu, has no merit or meaning. The question about the welfare of a single person apart from kith and kin seems absorb in the ubuntu philosophy. The greeting, “How are you?” infers that you could be some way that your people are not. Or that the circumstances of your people are not your circumstances. In the practice of ubuntu, the report and disclosure of your wellbeing is a report of the wellbeing of your people.  So, the greeting in the marketplace is “How is it?” The response is - “We are well.” The response is in the plural. In ubuntu, if your mother is well - you are well.  If you brother or sister are on hard times – then you are on hard times.  If your aunt or uncle had a victory, then you had a victory. How you are is how they are – because “all-of-we-is-one.” Ubuntu is bubbling up all around the USA. People all over the country are finding ways, while honoring physical distancing and quarantine, to build community, find community, be community, support community, live as if we are one community. Neighborhoods are having cocktail parties while each neighbor stays on their own porch. Synchronous on-line experiences like concerts, card games, birthday parties, yoga, cooking lessons, and writing sessions are easing the feelings of loneliness and the strain of being alone. Streamed and recorded worship experiences are connecting disconnected souls.  Experiencing community, being part of something bigger than oneself, knowing that you are connected to neighbor, fictive kin, family and co-workers helps all of us cope and survive in these death dealing times. In ubuntu, individualism is replaced with empathy, forgiveness, mutuality, and a feeling of deep connection with all that is. The Wabash Center, in our nimbleness and responsiveness, has reached out to our participants asking, “How is it?” We have heard from our colleagues the many ways they are sustaining and building community. We have also listened to laments from persons in the academic community who feel neglected, overlooked, and lonely.  We have heard colleagues say, with relief in their voices, – thank you for checking on me, because no one in my school has reached out to me.  Friends, the life of the mind cannot be a life of isolation unto death.  Check on your colleagues – just say, “How is it?”  And – as important - do not be afraid to reach back when you receive a call. Participating in activities of community will beat back the fear, the anguish and the trepidation. The devastation of the pandemic will be felt for years. Together (and not apart) we will survive. In the words of Toni Morrison -- "This is precisely the time when artists go to work.  There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language.  That is how civilizations heal."  Let community building be our artistic message. Let the composers among us write songs celebrating the marvel of community. Open the old cookbooks for cocktail formulas and recipes to reconnect with the ancestors. Make quilts in virtual sewing bees for the babies born at this peculiar time; knit shawls for those who are now widowed. Relieve a parent who is home schooling by writing poetry with their children on Facetime. Map the vegetable garden you will soon plant and ask your neighbor which veggies would they like planted.  Find a way to create something for someone else knowing this gesture of care and thoughtfulness will radiate out to everybody. And when the blues come (as they will) – write the words of lament, despair and hopelessness, express the uncertainty and rage, make vivid your messiness and unbalance and sorrow. Then share it with someone else – a neighbor or friend - to help them release their pain. And so – the question, I suppose, is “how is it with me?” I am both overjoyed and overwhelmed.  I am so grateful to the Wabash Center staff for their maximum flexibility in a time when we could have gone dormant.  We transitioned to working remotely while at the same time scrambled to create needed resources for our participants.  We created a dedicated web-page for online teaching resources, tripled the number of podcasts, hosted digital check-in conversations for more than 20 workshop groups, created a Facebook page and started live webinars. We are creating a page for artistic expression and dedicated blog column for online teaching. I am overjoyed about my staff’s dedication and hard work.  We have gotten feedback that our efforts are helpful in this moment of disenfranchisement. My overwhelmed-ness is that I started the job of directing the Wabash Center just three months ago; I am still disoriented.  Then, last week, I was informed that in my circle, three friends are diagnosed with COVID-19; the wife of a friend died on Wednesday, and the brother of another friend died of cancer on Sunday.  Both families are in grief and in upheaval because the funerals will be livestreamed. In the spirit of ubuntu – we are overjoyed, we are new to our job and overwhelmed, we are grieving the loss of loved ones and incensed because a livestreamed funeral is inadequate to hold our sorrow. Even as I write this, I have a keen sense of my community gather around me - calling daily, checking-in regularly – finding ways to be together through this chaos.

One of the major advantages of the online learning environment is the capacity to help students develop critical thinking in more effective and efficient ways than the classroom environment allows. Emphasizing student engagement through online discussion forums is a powerful way to cultivate critical thinking. By having students engage more intentionally with texts and media, and respond to well-crafted prompts and questions, instructors can immediately assess the level of a student's understanding and concepts acquisition. Reading student responses to well-crafted prompts and questions is akin to a form of mind reading. The instructor gains immediate feedback on what the student thinks, how a student is thinking, the level of understanding achieved, and can identify misunderstandings. Assessing online student responses allows the teacher to provide correctives, follow up with clarifying questions, challenge fuzzy thinking, and push for specificity. In this way the teacher can cultivate critical thinking and assess evidence about how well students achieve it throughout the course. Critical thinking is one of the universally desired goals in teaching. The current ATS M.Div. program goals includes “. . . development of capacities—intellectual and affective . . . ” as one of its ministerial formation outcomes (Degree Program Standards A.3.1.3.). The online discussion experience is one of the most useful methods for developing and assessing critical thinking. What is Critical Thinking? Critical thinking is a particular cognitive activity evidenced by specific components. Attached is a handout, "Assessing and Cultivating Critical Thinking Online" with nine of those components. Other components of critical thinking not included are credibility, sufficiency, reliability, and practicality. You can use the handout to assess student responses for critical thinking. Sharing the chart with your students, or, converting it into an assessment rubric for online academic discussion can help your students cultivate critical thinking and help you assess how well they achieve it.

In the first blog of this series (readers are encouraged to read this introductory blog, “Nobody Goes to the Cinema to Read the Screenplay,” HERE), I noted that I’ve tried to boost my multimedia literacy by becoming a student of the cinema and seeking convergences between filmmaking and homiletics. The second blog introduced the importance of audience impact in filmmaking (and especially “impact teams”) as a model for encouraging preachers to find out the impact a sermon actually has had on their hearers’ lives (find Part II HERE). It’s time now to turn to editing, an important step in both filmmaking and preaching. As effortless as it might seem, “a film is a universe where chance is never an excuse for anything . . . it is a series of hundreds of very particular decisions, and every single one of them must be felt. That is the agony and the satisfaction of the process.”[1] The same is true in preaching. (Unfortunately, sometimes the “agony” bit as well.) Instead of chance, we might talk about the Holy Spirit. But even then, it is often said that crafting sermons is “10% inspiration and 90% perspiration.” Part of the 90% is coming up with content, but another part is the arrangement of that content. That’s where editing comes in. Two big picture editing tasks have to do with changing scenes and cutting. Scene changes A lesson in scene changes begins with the script. Look at a film script and you will find that screenwriters indicate a scene change as such: INT. NIXON TEAM OBSERVATION ROOM – DAY – (1977) Soon thereafter might be a similar notation: INT. FROST TEAM OBSERVATION ROOM – DAY – (1977) Every time the scene changes (even simply from the interior of a room indicated as “INT” to the exterior indicated as “EXT” or, in this case, from one interior observation room to another), the screenwriter makes such a notation. In the homiletics classroom, it is instructive to have the screenplay in hand while watching the scene to become more observant of these changes. When the editor has done a successful job, we hardly even notice such changes when immersed in the film. While preachers want hearers to have this experience, it will not be a seamless one if, in the crafting process, preachers are not aware of the scene changes and the sense-making they serve. Therefore, literally inserting scene directions like these in our sermon scripts (as a reminder, I call them scripts) is one step (and not a very time consuming one) in the revision process. This helps us see if scenes are changing too often or not enough, or if they are in the right order. So, for example, one might see the following in a sermon script. EXT. SEA OF GALILEE – DAY – (30 C.E.) After a move highlighting the disciples strengthened relationship with Jesus, the preacher might remind her congregation about a recent congregational gathering organized for the purpose of strengthening their relationship with Jesus. The preacher would add the following to the script:  INT. FIRST LUTHERAN FELLOWSHIP HALL – DAY – (2019) It often comes as a surprise to preachers to see how many times they flip back and forth between the 1st c. and the 21st c. in only one paragraph of writing. The result creates a kind of “homiletical jet lag” for the hearer and, therefore, needs to be edited. If preachers do keep the back-and-forth nature between centuries, transitional phrases become very important as “establishing shots.” Unlike the filmmaker, the preacher typically does not have a visual to suggest such a change. The visual must be created with words. A common (if not somewhat cliché) transition is, “just like the disciple, we . . .” At least this serves to move the hearer from the 1st c. to the present. Cutting Pardon the violent imagery, but “Kill Your Darlings” is the phrase used to exhort creatives to get rid of one’s pet (some say “self-indulgent”) scenes in order to serve “the greater good of the work.” In the same way that filmmakers know that movie-goers will not sit for a 4-hour film (nor will their budgets allow for it), preachers know the time expectations of their parishioners. A one-hour worship service likely requires a sermon that is no longer than 15 minutes. So, using best practices from filmmaking, teachers can teach the following steps to student preachers. First, return to the importance of impact; in preaching, this is called the sermon’s function. Make sure each move of the sermon advances that hoped-for impact and cut everything that does not. While that opening joke might get a laugh, if it does not guide people to a deeper relationship with Jesus, cut it. Second, rethink too much exposition of background story. Think: less is more. The film editor discovers it may not be necessary to run through a montage that begins with the moment of the protagonist’s birth, followed up with a wide shot of a current house before getting to the argument with one’s kids in the living room. Staying close on the body language during the living room dialogue, with an occasional shot of the photographs on the mantel, will give us the idea that there is a backstory. The same is true in preaching. The preacher need not reiterate the entire story that was just read a few minutes earlier. After offering an “establishing shot” followed by a transitional phrase, zoom in to the action of the scene of the living room. Let the hearers fill in the surroundings after you’ve given them what they need in order to do so. Now, I suspect many preachers hardly have enough time just to come up with something to say Sunday after Sunday, much less spend time in the “editing room.” As a teacher of preaching, I tell students that while I cannot give them time, I can teach steps for revising if and when they have even small bits of time. If nothing else, I encourage them to watch more films with an eye toward editing and impact, and perhaps some tools will serve their homiletical practices. [1] Jon Boorstin, Making Movies Work: Thinking Like a Filmmaker (Los Angeles, Silman-James Press), 6.

Amy Oden offers this Christian mindfulness practice for faculty and students who may need to pause occasionally during this time of disruption and anxiety in order to be more fully present. The practice draws on attentive breathing and embodiment from traditions of Christian spiritual practice. In this audio file, Oden walks through the 4 steps of 1) attentive breathing, 2) attentive embodiment, 3) acknowledgement and 4) discovery as outlined in her book, Right Here, Right Now: The Practice of Christian Mindfulness (Abingdon Press, 2017). 4 Steps To Christian Mindfulness Audio File Dr. Oden is also featured as a guest in the Wabash Center's Dialogue On Teaching Podcast.   Episode 10 - A Teacher’s Imagination during the Crisis: Conversation with Amy Oden

I’ve been reviewing instructional video presentations for a project. Primarily I screen them to review how effective the presenter is in applying sound pedagogy. It’s amazing how many basic rules of good communication presenters break—consistently—-even professional speakers and celebrated “master teachers.” The other side of the equation that puzzles me is the level of tolerance audiences seem to have for poor presentations. I wonder sometimes if we’ve seen so few well-delivered presentations that we’ve lowered our expectations, and therefore, demand so little of presenters. Most of the presentations I see are entertaining but not educational, even when they portend to be. Here are five elements that are consistently ignored or poorly handled by presenters—lecturers, instructors, or workshop leaders. If these had been given attention every presentation I reviewed would be improved tremendously. Focus. Presenters need to have ONE focus for their presentation or lecture. The question to ask oneself is, “What is the ONE thing this presentation is about?” When you identify it, then stick to that one thing. The most powerful presentations make the “one thing” a concept, sometimes called a "big idea." Therefore, the better question is, “What is the one concept I want to present?” To maintain focus, it is critical to avoid "scattered dialogue," digressions, or any verbiage that is not on point. If something is not related to or derivative of your big idea, don't talk about it. Scope. Scope has to do with coverage. Any one thing (concept) we choose as our focus can still be complex. The question is, “What is the cope of my treatment for this one thing I want students to learn and master?” Every element of the presentation—from illustration to visuals, should support and legitimately connect with the one concept you are presenting. Pace. The brain has its own rhythm for how it processes information. One element is the role of “attention span.” People have a longer attention span than we give them credit for due to the brain's capacity to "chunk" and make connections with the information it receives; but we have to help students make the connection. One key to helping students process information is the pace of the presentation. An effective rule is to change the learner’s focus every five to seven minutes (using "stimulus variation"), and you want to shift the pace every ten to fifteen minutes. Acquisition. In order for your presentation to be meaningful to the learners, they must be able to “acquire” the concept you are trying to teach. Students cannot learn what they don't understand. The question is, “Do my listeners comprehend what I am communicating?” Therefore, you need to build in points of “testing for comprehension” throughout your presentation. This includes testing for misunderstanding and providing correctives. The flow is: (1) provide exposition, (2) assess comprehension, (3) provide correctives, (4) link to previous, (5) bridge to what is next. Application. The final element that most often is missing from presentations is application. If your listeners or students are not able to immediately apply, at some level, what you are presenting then (1) it is not meaningful to them, and, (2) it will result in a failure of retention. If you cannot make immediate application of the one concept you are teaching, then your learners will tend to forget it as soon as they walk out the door. The next time you prepare a lecture, class, session, or workshop presentation, check to see how well you address each of the five elements for effective instruction.