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I learned something this holiday season—my first holiday season as a grandfather.  My family traveled from Atlanta, Georgia to Orlando, Florida to surprise my mother, Mrs. Earlene Watkins, on her 80th birthday. The surprise is summed up in this moment. [caption id="attachment_239279" align="aligncenter" width="397"] Mrs. Earlene Watkins, My Mother[/caption] My mother didn’t know that that I was coming with my wife. But, we weren’t the big surprise. The big surprise was the new addition to our family. Her new, four-month old, great-grandson, Princeton Josiah Smith. My daughter, Nicole Smith, and her husband, Walter Smith, conspired with us to make this day possible! My daughter Nastasia Watkins and I both videotaped this historic moment. I shot with two cameras: I walked in using my Canon G7 Mark II, and then I shot with my Canon EOS C100. These two cameras are what I am most comfortable with. I had to bring them in large camera bags, set them up, and prepare to shoot. In contrast, my thirty-two-year old daughter, Nastasia Watkins, shot her video with the camera she lives with: her iPhone. She not only shot this video with her phone, but she also edited the video on her phone. She posted her video within minutes. I took my video back to the hotel, edited it on my laptop in Final Cut X, and posted my video on the next day! [caption id="attachment_239281" align="aligncenter" width="392"] My Mother, My Daughter, My Son-in-law and Princeton Josiah Smith[/caption] What did I learn? Nastasia Watkins is no teenager. My daughter is a partner in her own law firm. She and her peers are completely comfortable making memories with what is in their hands. As I watched her shoot video and take pictures over the holidays, it was clear that she was always ready to shoot. On the other hand, it was more work for me. It didn’t come naturally. I didn’t use my phone. I had to go get my camera, get ready, shoot, and then put the camera down. My daughter never put her camera down. It was no challenge for her to be engaged in the moment and shoot simultaneously. I was wowed by her ability to be fully present and to capture the moment.  She taught me how her peers and those coming up behind her are processing, capturing, and seeing their world. They see the world with phone in hand. Their phone is not used to make phone calls, but as a way to see, engage, make sense of, understand, and frame their world. For we teachers, these are our students. They see their world through a screen the size of their phones. If we are to understand how to engage them, we must see what they see, how they see, and how they learn to make sense of that which they engage. How do we do this? We must pick our phones up and start to use them as they use them. I have to put my big, expensive cameras down. I am recommitting myself to using my iPhone X for the reason I say I bought it: for the camera. When you see commercials about the latest phone, they never advertise the phone’s ability to make phone calls. They sell the phone as a camera. It was the commercial that sold me, and after this holiday season I have recommitted to using the most powerful pedagogical tool I have with me all the time and that is the camera on my phone.  When we use the phone as a camera and editing device, we will begin to engage and make sense of the world our students live in. This will, in turn, inform our teaching and learning. We will see the phone as a teaching and learning device and not as a distraction from our traditional teaching moments. When we see the tool in our hand as a revolutionary pedagogical device, it will change how we use that which we have in our hand. [caption id="attachment_239282" align="aligncenter" width="408"] The Family at the Surprise Birthday Party for Mrs. Earlene Watkins @ 80![/caption] Well, I know you want to see the two videos . . .  here you go! Video by Nastasia Watkins https://vimeo.com/382453975 Video by Ralph Watkins https://vimeo.com/382456567 Photo credit: Victor Watkins

Introduction to the Series The cinema has become an important means of cultural communication, a contemporary language in need of understanding and explication . . . Some even believe that cinema studies is positioned to become the new MBA, a means of general preparation for careers in fields as diverse as law and the military.[1] Although multimedia literacy is not one of the accreditation standards for theological schools (yet!), add theological studies to the diverse fields mentioned in the quote above. As seminary education continues to follow the higher education trend toward online teaching and learning, instructors are recognizing the need to enhance their multimedia literacy. Minimally, it is important to note that many of our students are already literate in the contemporary language of cinema. Many students would agree with the following:  Movies serve not simply as a commodity but as a primary storytelling medium of the twenty-first century, interpreting reality for us, providing us with a common language, and acting as a type of cultural glue.[2] For many, “image” has replaced “text” as the central tool of communication. This substitution challenges theology’s centrality of the Word (text) and revives a longstanding love/hate relationship between the pious and images. The obstacles are especially palpable for an oral/aural ecclesial practice like preaching. After all, faith comes through hearing (Romans 10:17), not seeing, right? Despite such challenges, the Reformation spirit asks us theologians to embrace new means of communicating the gospel. Cinematic competency seems to be today’s printing press. So, in an attempt to meet students where they are (and teach others along the way), I’ve tried to boost my multimedia literacy by becoming a student of the cinema and seeking convergences between filmmaking and homiletics for the purposes of enlivening the preached word, communicating the gospel, and impacting hearers and their/our world. Part 1: Nobody Goes to the Cinema to Read the Screenplay Despite numerous obvious differences between the two fields that might render them too dissimilar for comparison (for example, films take years to produce and preachers generally have to squeeze sermon preparation into 6 busy days; films are primarily visual experiences, sermons are primarily aural experiences), preachers have much to learn from filmmakers. In this 4-part blog series, I will propose elements, concepts, and techniques from filmmaking that can serve preachers. We begin with this week’s reminder: Nobody goes to the cinema to read the screenplay . . . or even to hear it read. In the same way, nobody goes to worship to read a written sermon . . . or even watch the preacher read it. Oh, yes, people in the pews have become accustomed to the latter, but they should expect more from us preachers. You see preaching is inevitably a kind of performance. These two “p” words are often considered to be at odds since preaching is not solely for entertainment or to heighten the performers ego (to be sure, performers in a variety of arts, including film, expect their performances to move beyond these two outcomes as well). However, preaching is a performance in that it “completes, carries out, accomplishes” something, as its Old French etymology suggests (par-fournir). Indeed, preaching brings an experience to life. T.S. Eliot noted that “Literature was turning blood into ink.” Preaching, on the other hand, turns ink (the written biblical text) into blood; that is, it intends to bring the sacred text to life. Therefore, a sermon is a road map or a blue print for a transformational experience. “Road map” and “blueprint” are often used for screenplays as well. Preachers would do well to consider the following analogy from a screenwriter. However brilliant, [a screenplay is] always in a state of becoming, forever on the way to being something else—a film. You can admire a cocoon for its marriage of function and form, but ultimately it’s the butterfly that will make its way in the world.[3] Or, as another puts it, “. . . screenplays don’t really exist until they’re made into movies.”[4] In the same way, one might consider that a written sermon doesn’t really exist until it’s preached. So, how does this connection to the digital world guide the teaching of preaching? First and foremost, simply making the analogy explicit quickly resonates with preachers-to-be. Therefore, students are challenged to make their “scripts” (yes, I call them scripts) a means to an end, and not the ends themselves. Sermons that pay attention to sermon delivery from the beginning of the writing/crafting process tend to create more of an experience for and with the listeners. Such preaching has more of a chance to turn ink into blood and “make its way in the world.”   [1] Robert K. Johnston, Craig Detweiler, and Kutter Callaway. Deep Focus: Film and Theology in Dialogue, 11. [2] Deep Focus, 10. [3] Dan Gurskis. The Short Screenplay: Your Short Film from Concept to Production (Aspiring Filmmaker's Library), Kindle Edition, xii. [4] Joel Engel, Oscar-Winning Screenwriters on Screenwriting (New York: Hyperion), 2. 

With the possible exception of Drew University Theological School where I was on faculty for twenty years, the Wabash Center has been the most influential institution to my vocational formation.  I participated in my first Wabash workshop in 2000 and received my first grant in 2001.  Since then, I have worked as a consultant, workshop/colloquy leader, blogger, and committee member.  For twenty years, I have been a stalwart fan of the Center’s important mission.  I have regularly traveled to and from Crawfordsville, Indiana – but never thinking, in my wildest dreams, that one day I would call C-ville home.  Peering out of the van windows as I was being comfortably driven to and from the Indianapolis airport, the sight of confederate flags made me uneasy.  I have noticed on many occasions the gun racks and guns in the pick-up trucks parked in the drug store parking lot.  Like many towns in America, racial/ethnic diversity is still a contested issue in Crawfordsville. The Wabash Center staff has learned to be conscious of the racist climate and prejudicial views of some members of the Crawfordsville community, and they make every effort to limit negative interactions and foster hospitable space for participants when we leave the campus and venture into the town.  The generous hospitality of the Wabash Center always seemed to over-shadow the backdrop of its location in small town middle America.  However, visiting, even regularly, is quite different from taking up residence.  I have become a resident of 47933! How did this happen?  The Tuesday before Thanksgiving 2018, my phone rang.  When I answered, my enthusiastic colleague informed me that the position of director for the Wabash Center had been posted.  The friend was calling to encourage me to apply for the position.  I asked smugly, “Is the Center going to still be in Crawfordsville, Indiana?”  With the response of yes, I changed the subject.  I had no interest in living in a small, rural town in Indiana.  The call ended with my friend asking me to consider applying and me saying, unequivocally – no!  Over the next weeks, my rigid response gave way to a full-blown process of vocational discernment.  During the weeks, I quickly learned, again, that vocational discernment is not for the weak hearted, cowardly, or those who give a hasty “no.” As I pondered the possibility of the move, the new job, the new responsibility, the new reality, many people, trying to assure me that I should consider the position, reminded me that the most stressful times in life are divorce, death of a loved one, and moving across country.  I cannot say I was grateful for the data.  My discernment churned deeply – unearthing unfamiliar, difficult, and at times exhausting, questions.  To lighten the burden of the challenging discernment process, I turned to read the masters.  In this instance, the masters I read for guidance, wisdom, and strength were Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison. When you put Maya Angelou in conversation with Toni Morrison – you get inspiration and more to the point – you get trouble.  In my case, tectonic plate shifting trouble!  Toni Morrison spoke first as I wrestled with whether or not to make application for the job of director of the Wabash Center.  Morrison spoke to me directly, personally, through her novel Home. In the novel, after the character Cee has gone through a long regimen of prescribed healing, Miss Ethel talks to her about freedom … Look to yourself.  You free.  Nothing and nobody is obliged to save you but you.  Seed your own land.  You young and a woman and there’s serious limitation in both, but you a person too.  Don’t let Lenore or some trifling boyfriend and certainly no devil doctor decide who you are.  That’s slavery.  Somewhere inside you is that free person I’m talking about.  Locate her and let her do some good in the world. As I reflected upon Morrison’s lesson, I was confident I had accomplished a modicum of the work of freedom in my 57 years on the planet and in my womanist approach to teaching.  Yet, in considering if I should make application to the post at Wabash, I was being asked to do it again, some more, but deeper and with more tenacity.  I was haunted in my discernment by the notion of re-locating and getting re-acquainted with my inside free person. I did the work of conversation, meditation, and prayer; she found me. This time she informed me that we were moving to Crawfordsville, Indiana.  I cannot say exactly when in this discernment and transition that Maya Angelou reached out to me and joined the conversation – but she did.  Through her poem entitled “On the Pulse of Morning,” Dr. Angelou spoke into me to… Give birth again To the dream…. Each new hour holds new chances For new beginnings. Do not be wedded to forever To fear, yoked eternally To brutishness. The horizon leans forward, Offering you space to place new steps of change. Here, on the pulse of this fine day You may have the courage To look up and out upon me, The rock, the river, the tree, your country…... In my big scary move toward freedom in, of all places, Crawfordsville, Indiana, I am placing new steps of change, giving birth again, and eager for the pulse of the fine day.  I have moved to Crawfordsville, and, so far – I like it very much. I am not suggesting that anyone else uproot their lives and move to unfamiliar spaces.  I am bearing witness to my experience from which I have learned  that the work we are about as teachers committed to being free people and committed to the work of freeing others has chasms, demands, and opportunities which, regardless of how long you have done this work – will surprise and disorient.  I am learning anew that the work of freedom requires new-fangled excavations, renewed explorations, and new ideas about old thoughts for the doing of good in the world.  I’m thinking about buying a pick-up truck. To say that I tumbled into Crawfordsville is an understatement. Like most cross-country moves, there was stress, distress, decision fatigue and moments of utter confusion. As well, there were experiences of family, friends, and strangers helping in my uprooting and successful replanting.  I am soundly in this new place, in this new job, in this new phase of freedom and free-ness, of being free and of teaching freedom in new ways.  I am especially grateful for new friends, and new fictive kin who are helping me get oriented, set-up and settled in. My big scary move was met by folks with large hearts and willing hands of compassion and care.  The Wabash Center will be celebrating twenty-five years of service in 2020 - at the same moment I am assuming the position of Director.  I am humbled and glad to be part of the staff in this celebration.  My blogging will continue under the moniker Teaching on the Pulse as homage to my wise-ones, Morrison and Angelou.  In my blogs, I will keep you updated on the work of the Wabash Center as well as provide my observations and testimony to the goings-on in the religion academy and world. I am pleased that the Lilly Endowment, Inc (our exclusive funder) will be conducting a year- long program assessment.  This program evaluation will allow us to dream about future directions and foci of the Wabash Center.  During the year of assessment, our programming will not be curtailed.  Also, the staff and I are adding a few items to the program planning for which I am focusing. I will be convening a group of senior African American women colleagues to write a second volume of the anthology Being Black/Teaching Black.  This second volume, written in creative non-fiction, will focus on the ways the cultural, intellectual, racial, and spiritual formation of African American women shaped their classroom teaching.  We are partnering with the Malcolm X Institute on the Wabash College campus to celebrate their fifty years of service.  This blog will keep you informed as we move forward with assessment, the typical programs, and these new initiatives. Loosing my free person from inside me has begun in Crawfordsville, Indiana and at the Wabash Center!

There’s a term for the anxiety many novice instructors feel about the online teaching-learning environment. It’s called “transactional distance.” This relates to the dissonance of feeling “distant” or disconnected from students when one is used to only the experience of the face-to-face classroom experience. Tisha Bender, in Discussion-Based Online Teaching To Enhance Student Learning (Stylus, 2013), identified the pedagogical components that can mitigate the discomfort of transactional distance (something that potentially affects both teacher and student online). Interestingly, but not surprising, they are the same things that are applicable in the classroom learning environment. Arguably there is as much, if not more, transactional distance in a traditional classroom experience as there is online. I've done classroom observations where I witnessed over half of the students spending most of their time on Facebook, Instagram, and shopping sites while an oblivious professor lectured on. Here are the things we know enhances student learning: For the student: Experiencing a sense of belonging Having a safe place where they can risk learning Having the opportunity to learn from others Feeling self-motivated to learn Receiving feedback from the instructor Understanding and feeling comfortable in the social environment of the learning context. For the instructor: Practicing hospitality in the learning environment Providing a place where respect and affirmation of others' opinion is affirmed Providing opportunities for collaborative learning Giving feedback Creating the conditions for learning (interest, curiosity, challenge, and meeting student needs) Understanding and managing the social environment of the learning context (classroom or online). All that to say, one way to overcome anxiety about transactional distance is to remember: • Learning is learning, in whatever context • Learning is a social phenomenon; pay attention to the important “non-instructional” dynamics of the learning environment and experience • It is the application of sound pedagogy that makes the difference in the effectiveness of learning (context and modes are secondary) • The context of learning matters, but no context is perfect and learners have great capacity for being resilient when it comes to contexts of learning • Pedagogically sound course design can mitigate the challenges of the online environment that create transactional distance • The role of the instructor is critical to effective learning. The two absolutely necessary components for successful online learning are: (1) teacher engagement, and (2) student participation. Whether you teach in the traditional classroom environment, design a hybrid course, or facilitate an online learning experience, how well are you paying attention to transactional factors for successful learning?

Recently, I worked with a colleague to conduct student surveys with currently enrolled students and alumni from the first decade of our distance MDiv program. We asked students what they would like our faculty to know about their teaching strategies for the online portions of classes. About two-thirds of respondents mentioned a desire for increased faculty presence and investment in the course. In some cases, these were very strongly worded: “Faculty participation and engagement online is a make or break factor for the class.” “Beyond a reasonably well-designed course, the instructor(s) showing they are present and attentive is the most important aspect.” “And seriously folks, just because the coursework is online is no excuse for the instructor to not be present in the class . . . . Be present with us. Respond to our posts as if you were responding to our embodied voice breathing the same air at the same time. Don't make us self-teach ourselves with your materials and not with your experience/presence.” Now, faculty responses to this data were mixed. Rightfully so, they felt that in the structuring of the class, the selection of materials to engage, the formation of discussion questions, responding to student posts, providing instructions for written assignments, and numerous other ways, they were regularly “in” their classes. But all of this work that the faculty member put into designing and implementing the course did not always equate to the student’s sense that faculty were present in real time, invested in student learning, and cared for them as people. And for most of our students, this social presence was the most critical factor for good online teaching. Faculty simply weren’t perceived by students as “being there” when they were present in textual form. And, here I am stretching a bit beyond my data, but I believe students often experience textual communication from faculty as evaluative, directive, and disembodied. In creative nonfiction and memoir genres many writers can make themselves socially present through the written word. But, this feat takes a different kind of writing than most faculty are trained to do. The ways we are trained to write as academics tend to communicate a distant expert, a not-so-humanizing aspect of our teaching selves. One nearly effortless way for faculty to make themselves more socially present in an online course is by creating a kind of connective tissue throughout the class in the use of short, informal videos. As a teaching coach to online faculty, I was initially pretty anti-video. I worried that talking head videos were just a non-dialogical information dump, either through reading written lectures to present content or worse, recording lectures in a residential class and using them later for an online section. These were not the kinds of videos our students desired. The videos that the students felt created social presence often involved faculty just hitting record on their laptop and chatting in real time. Faculty were using these videos to share weekly updates about how the class was going, to give brief lecturettes to help students navigate difficult material, to provide a frame for the topic of the week and identify its importance, to offer introductions to readings or other course materials, and to coach for success on writing assignments. While it feels awkward to stare meaningfully into the top of your computer screen and speak directly to students, these videos presenced faculty in a very different way than either voice recording or textual communication. Students felt more connected to those faculty who used these short, informal videos. Most of the time, these videos contained the kind of offhanded explanatory speaking that you might do in the first and last five minutes of class, when you present an assignment, or in response to student questions. Our students marked the importance of these video appearances in their sense of having access to and benefitting from the expertise of the professor, establishing a relationship and sense of trust in the professor, helping with course integration, and believing that the professor was actively guiding the course. Of course, their power to invoke the presence and care of the faculty diminished when the videos were obviously designed for an earlier class, which makes me regret my choice to ever change my hair length and style. Professionally staged or highly polished videos also reduce the communication of a caring human presence. Sitting in the office speaking into a phone camera may feel like a ridiculous way to connect with students, but it turns out that the vulnerability of offering your regular teacher-self helps you be present to your students in powerful ways.

You may have heard the announcements that the Wabash Center has launched a new open-access, online journal, The Wabash Center Journal on Teaching. The entire contents of the inaugural issue of the journal is now available for free download online. For twenty-two years the Wabash Center has been publishing Teaching Theology & Religion (TTR), owned by Wiley-Blackwell. Now we’ve moved our whole editorial team from TTR to this new publishing venture in order to make our efforts available digitally without subscription. Although the Wabash Center will no longer be involved in the publication of TTR, Wiley-Blackwell intends to continue publishing it with a new editorial team beginning with volume 23 (January 2020). When we started TTR as a new and unknown center for teaching in the 1990s, we needed the prestige of a major publisher in the field of religion and theology to lend gravitas to the emerging field of the scholarship of teaching and learning. But for many years now we have regretted the paywall our articles have lived behind, limiting our ability to promote this scholarship, support authors, and inspire readers. The Wabash Center Journal on Teaching will continue publishing the high-quality, peer reviewed scholarship on teaching in the fields of theological and religious studies that has been the hallmark of TTR for over two decades. The new journal carries forward the same scope and focus of scholarship – but now our efforts will be freely available online. In the new journal you’ll find the popular Teaching Tactics. In addition to Forums (with contributions now listed individually) we will also highlight Special Topic sections. And the new journal reintroduces Book Reviews, which were removed from TTR in 2015 to allow more space for articles in the print journal. So while you’ll find The Wabash Center Journal on Teaching familiar, you will also begin to notice new developments. The open-access online platform allows us to provide convenient links to sources on the internet and links back to previously published articles. But more than that, the new platform provides the opportunity for The Wabash Center Journal on Teaching to become more than just a print journal available online. It’s easy to insert links to video clips, graphics, or sound files – although these links must be found on the web or created by authors. It takes a leap of imagination to conceive how teaching issues and contexts, arguments and evidence, could be represented graphically, in motion, visually. Until now, the written word would have seemed to be the distinctive home for sustained rigorous, reflection on teaching. But we’re moving into a new world in which the “text” that creates and makes legible academic thinking needn’t be limited to words on a page. So we issue this challenge to our readers and authors: send us sustained critical reflection on your teaching practice and context that explores the boundaries and possibilities of representational forms and genres available on an open-access online platform. 4 Highlights of the Inaugural Journal Issue 1. “State of the Field” essays by: Frank M. Yamada Eugene V. Gallagher and Joanne Maquire A Conversation with Maryellen Weimer (longtime editor of The Teaching Professor, and leading authority on disciplinary based scholarship on teaching) 2. Reflections on the teaching legacy of Dr. Katie Geneva Cannon by several of her former students: Stacey M. Floyd-Thomas Karen K. Seat Miguel A. De La Torre Angela D. Sims Edwin David Aponte 3. Special Topic:  Threshold Concepts in Biblical Studies (with contributions from John Van Maaren, Tat-siong Benny Liew, Richard A. Ascough, and Jocelyn McWhirter) 4. Teaching Tactics Zoom in on Interpretive Skills by, Amy Beth Jones, Stephanie Day Powell The Buddha's Positionality, by Christina Anne Kilby Maximizing Engagement between Online and On-Campus Students Via Zoom, by Daniel Orlando Álvarez Does This Sound Religious?, by Amy DeRogatis, Isaac Weiner

Some things are best expressed digitally. When the Wabash Center's "Teaching with Digital Media" Workshop challenged my preoccupation with using text to explain visual concepts, I decided to create a video rather than typing a "Dos and Don'ts" list for students in preaching courses. With the help of two savvy graduate assistants, we produced this VLOG. Spoiler alert: everyone survives!  

When it comes to effective teaching, “less is more.” While the brain is an amazing information and multi-sensory processor, research suggests it can only effectively learn one new thing (concept) at a time. The maximum number of “bits of information” the brain can process at any given time is eight (like in the “eight bits” of a computer chip), or, as sometimes notated “7 +/- 2″ (seven plus or minus two).* When it comes to teaching, we do well to focus on teaching one new concept at each learning session (that’s one new concept per class session!). That guide can help inform the structure and scope of your course. It's a helpful corrective to the common anxious temptation of trying to cover too much during a course. So, for a twelve-week course, teach twelve interconnected or derivative concepts! No more! How much information are you trying to pass on to your students in one sitting? How effective are you in focusing on the single most important thing you want your students to learn during a single class period? To be more effective in your teaching, try these suggestions: • Aim at teaching only one thing at a time (one concept, one principle, or one big idea) • Focus on teaching a central concept and no more than two derivative concepts • Spend time on rehearsal of the concept (define it, clarify what it is and what it isn’t, provide examples and non-examples, illustrate it, apply it) • Test for comprehension • Correct misunderstanding(s) of or about the concept • Provide an opportunity for learners to apply the concept. The truth is that learning is a complex enterprise and we are not very efficient at it. Learning involves multifaceted and interrelated processes like attention, motivation, comprehension, concept attainment, rehearsal, reinforcement, acceptance, valuing, accommodation, and application. In order to teach effectively we need to facilitate the learning process for our students as much as possible. Two guidelines that will always serve us well in teaching are: (1) less is more, and (2) K.I.S.S. ("Keep it simple, stupid"). *See George Miller, “The Magical Number 7, Plus or Minus 2: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information,” Psychological Review 63:81-97 (1956). More current literature on learning that takes into account brain research supports this concept. 

Recently I was working with my IT colleague, Dr. Justin Barber, on a project to use machine learning to gather data about student experience in our hybrid classes from our LMS (Learning Management System). Big data comes to theological education! Our curriculum committee was testing a common perception that our distance students felt better about their experience in the classes after they had been together on campus. To test this assumption, we asked Justin to do something called “sentiment analysis” on the discussion forums to see how the emotional tenor of their interactions changed once they had been together in space and time. Full disclosure: Justin is brilliant, and I often have no idea what AI (Artificial Intelligence) magic he has rendered. So, we always have to sit down for him to explain the results to me. Before performing the sentiment analysis, we summarized the aggregate posts of each discussion with three keywords to get a sense of the content of each discussion (excluding the common words that occur in almost every post like "the", "a", etc.). Then these three words would be analyzed before and after the campus visits to see if they were, on the whole, more positive after the students had been together. The three word combinations were often just the topic for the week and two key related terms. Hilariously, a colleague’s class in “Ancient and Emerging Practices” came up with the trio: church, tickle, sexuality. I had to explain to Justin who Phyllis Tickle was when he became concerned about what on earth was going on in that class. But as we scrolled through data from hundreds of forums over five years of data, week by week, the main word that showed up again and again was “thanks.” Thanks. As we scrolled, I was reminded of so many student posts that began with that word. “Thanks for sharing that story.” “Thanks for bringing up that topic, because I was wondering about it, too.” “Thanks for making that clearer, because when I read it I was totally confused.” While the results of the sentiment analysis were largely insignificant, this moment of realization of the function of gratitude in our online classrooms has stuck with me. It drew together something in my lived experience, but it was still surprising how often that it made the top three. Thanks. Not only in classes where emotional intelligence and personal sharing is expected, such as pastoral care courses, but in history classes, Bible classes, comparative religion classes. Many faculty fear a loss of relationality in online classes. They worry that peer-to-peer learning is diminished, that learning becomes a form of correspondence course between students and faculty. In my doctoral pedagogy class, students worry that conversations in online forums will mimic the trolling vitriol of Twitter comments. But here was dispassionate evidence that an attitude of respectful engagement was the overwhelming norm in all of our classes. In simple list form, we discovered over and over again the simple acknowledgement of indebtedness to another student: Thanks. As Justin and I processed this surprising result, we talked about how some of this polite deference might be a reflection of the somewhat tenuous nature of online community. Perhaps in situations where relationships aren’t reinforced by regular embodied interaction, a level of additional respect becomes a habitual marker of conversation in order to maintain connection and compensate for the way text doesn’t communicate body language, tone, or attentiveness. More cynically, this profusion of thanks might be a signal of perfunctory niceness, something that both our majority white female student population and church-related vocation students are socialized to perform. I like to think of this habit of gratitude as a way that students hold one another’s stories and learnings as gift. The esteemed religious educator Dr. Anne Streaty Wimberly once led a retreat in a church that I later served as youth minister. Even years later, the young people in that community remembered her as the “thank you for sharing lady” because she had taught them to receive every word spoken into the circle as gift, which required verbalized gratitude. Opening up a laptop in a faraway city to re-enter a challenging class alone can be a difficult discipline, particularly for students who already have very busy lives. Finding colleagues there who hold your contributions with respect and gratitude makes that space more gracious and inviting. And so our students, without our prompting, learned together to say thanks.

I have often assumed that students have more facility with technology than I do. Unfortunately, this assumption has been wrong and student learning has paid the price. So now, when there is likely to be a steep learning curve for some students relative to equipment (like recording on the iPhone) or a platform (like Vimeo) or learning management system (like Moodle), I integrate facility with technology into course assignments. For example, in a semester-long, face-to-face preaching course, students must record and post their third sermons into Moodle after preaching them in a local congregation. Unfortunately, I realized that even with weeks (if not months) of notice that such a requirement is upon them, many students would spend more time worrying about equipment failure than the sermon itself. Then after preaching they would spend hours trying to upload their sermon onto a video sharing platform only to run into trouble posting on the university’s learning management system. Even more, my teaching assistants’ available hours were being used up troubleshooting for anxious students and tech-savvy students were reaching the end of their willingness to assist classmates (and ashamed to admit some resentment).  Clearly an interruption in the cycle was needed and the onus was on me to be the interrupter. What follows is an iteration of my new m.o. I continue the practice of letting students know early in the semester (essentially, the first day) that they will be responsible for recording and posting sermons. But now, my very next sentence is, “And, know that by the time you get to sermon three you will have had numerous opportunities to increase your facility with the technology that is needed to fulfill that part of the assignment.” At that point, I turn the class over to a teaching assistant who introduces herself, articulates the extent to which she will be available to provide tech assistance, notes the portion of the syllabus that clearly outlines the technological requirements for the course, and distributes a “how to record and post videos of sermons” handout. Perhaps the most helpful change I made was to adapt an assignment in week three. I replaced the typical online text-based discussion forum with a visual post. In other words, instead of typing their response to the weeks’ reading, they posted a two-minute video. While this low-stakes assignment had a desired deadline, students were not penalized if they were late if they were having tech troubles. The TA was available to meet with students in pairs or groups of three to assist with their recordings and postings. Lo and behold, the discussion on the material was already beginning as students honed their recorded reflections. This assignment gave us a sense of how many (and who) might need additional tech assistance. We set up out-of-class tutoring sessions accordingly. By this point, everyone had already succeeded, albeit with some assistance.. Additional unforeseen blessings were 1) the posts were much more animated and creative than usual, which yielded more engaging discussion threads; and 2) students had begun to overcome the squeamishness of seeing themselves on video and hearing their recorded voices. A second major change is one I wish I would have discovered a decade ago. For the first two sermons in the class, I would operate the camera and a teaching assistant would post the videos. Of course, I got into this habit because I started teaching preaching before everyone carried around their own device (yes, there was such a time!). Now that nearly (!) everyone has such equipment readily available, it would be a wasted learning opportunity for students (and a waste of my energy and time) not to utilize it. Therefore, every student takes responsibility for being the camera operator for one peer. Not only is this valuable for the camera operator, but an additional benefit is that the preacher practices communicating his/her needs (e.g., location of camera, desired angle), which is good preparation for enlisting a helper in the congregation. While the stakes are getting higher, we set up a backup camera just in case a preacher forgets to charge his battery or a fellow classmate forgets to push “record.” Once again students have to transfer the digital recording to a platform that can be easily accessed on Moodle. At this point, we review and emphasize the handout’s recommended privacy settings.  After repeating this process for one additional in-class sermon, students are well prepared to plan for recording sermon three. They are enjoying a sense of accomplishment and getting credit for it! Even more, they can now focus on preparing faithful and impactful sermons for the congregational setting, instead of anxiously anticipating their technical demands.