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When I met with our first-year students during on-campus orientation five weeks into their program, a student complained to me about an assignment in my online class. I didn’t recognize what the student was describing, and after a few minutes I realized that it wasn’t from our class at all. He had been working from the to-do list on the main page of our learning management system (LMS), receiving assignments from all of his classes in an undifferentiated list, ordered only by due date. He found it difficult to mentally sort which assignments went with which class, and he felt frustrated and ready to quit. On the one hand, this student was an extreme example. With online orientation, most students understand how to “move” into individual courses to see assignments in context of the full site for the class. On the other hand, because distinct classrooms, different classmates, meeting times, and the visual presence of the instructor are often muted in online learning, this scenario of being adrift in a sea of deadlines and assignments is not all that unusual for online students. Whenever they “go” to different classes they do so sitting alone looking at the same screen, which can blend experiences from multiple classes in their mind. Increasingly students are using smaller phone screens and the combined to-do list of all courses as their guide through their education. Learning becomes a never-ending stream of calendrical tasks to squeeze in between work hours and caring for family members and the many other demands of working adult students. They are doggedly getting what they need to get done finished, but the bigger story of each class gets lost in the shuffle, making the scaffolding necessary for learning and retention more difficult to build. Since that conversation, I have been more aware of how students engage the LMS. I try to imagine what it is like to encounter the individual assignments and tasks of my class in isolation from one another as they pop up in a mixed to-do list generated by the system. Do they come across as a communal learning space or just another damn thing to get done? Can they even figure out which class the task has come from? I now work harder to communicate the connective tissue that holds together the task-oriented skeleton of the class in what appears on the to-do list. What often gets lost are the transitions between topics, where we have been and where we are going, the overall narrative arc of the class. Of course, this also easily happens in a residential class that meets once or twice a week, interrupted by six other days of busy life and other interactions. Without careful design and communication by instructors, the story of the class can be obscure to novices encountering it for the first time, whatever the setting. In my last blog, I talked about the importance of using short faculty videos to help create a sense of the social presence of the instructor in an online class. These videos are also a great way to create connective tissue from assignment to assignment, marking the developments in learning that the instructor has seen in the class, and naming where the class has been and where they are heading. If they are placed on the same page as the task, they help the student associate which instructor and which class the assignment comes from. This connective tissue can also be generated in textual narrative. Where I once would have an assignment that simply listed the readings and the discussion prompt for the day, now I will have several paragraphs reminding students of where we are in the course, why this topic for this day, and introducing the readings. A written mini-lecture might contextualize the moment in history that we are engaging, or why I think that this material is important, or what I hope they will learn from engaging it, or how it builds on what we have learned so far. One of the difficulties of providing this connective tissue in asynchronous classes is that often I am creating these pieces two weeks ahead of where the majority of the class is working. I can’t always draw on what happened in the last class session, like I would in a residential class. But I do my best to keep the whole story arc of the class in mind, and to clue students into our current moment, not unlike the recap of a season of television that happens before the first episode of the next series. This practice also keeps me honest about knowing the “why” for each task I set in the class so I can help students stay oriented in the midst of the continuous flow of tasks set for their learning.

Concepts are some of the most powerful components of learning and content mastery. In fact, concepts attainment is necessary for deep understanding. If your students don't grasp the concept, they don't really understand what you are trying to teach. This is a challenge in teaching in part because most students do not recognize a concept when they see it (and novice teachers often don't either). Further, concepts are abstract and therefore hard to grasp. And yet, the most important things we try to teach, what is referred to as "enduring understandings," is comprised of abstract concepts. What is a concept? Concepts consist of a category (sometimes called a class or a set) and the attributes by which to tell whether or not an object belongs in the category. Concepts, then, require the ability to build taxonomies. Students must discern likeness and difference, identify qualities, and name or create categories. No small feat for any learner, yet we've all been doing this cognitive feat since we were young children, and it remains a fundamental way we learn all through life. The Procedure for Teaching a Concept The best procedure to follow when teaching a concept is: Name the concept Define the concept Explicate the concept Provide an example of the concept Provide a non-example of the concept Identify criterial attributes of the concept Test for comprehension. It's quite amazing, but, if we follow this procedure learners are better able to acquire an understanding of a concept than if we try it any other way. Often it is in step three, that we fall into the trap of teaching misunderstandings. For example, using metaphors as explanation (rather than illustration). The genius of this powerful procedure is that you can apply it in five minutes, or, design an entire period or unit around it. You can use the procedure to introduce the concept for your lesson during the first five minutes of your class. Or, you can use the procedure as a scaffold for an entire unit of study, with each step as a student learning activity. Other common misunderstandings involve offering anthropomorphic ("The Bible says . . . " "History tells us . . ."), ontological (a failure to differentiate cause from end), or normative ("Because that's the rule . . . ," "God said it, I believe it, that settles it" or appealing to uncritical self-evident norms) explications when teaching concepts. Avoiding teaching misunderstanding requires we do the hard work of developing an accurate understanding of what we are trying to teach. Steps 4, 5, and 6 are the ones that help facilitate the process of acquiring an accurate understanding (going from the known to the unknown, building taxonomies, sharpening identification of occurrence, etc.). Here is a simple test: before trying to teach a concept try explaining it to someone else (1) simply, and (2) accurately. Preferably, you should have a young child around to experiment on. With complex concepts students will need more process time to gain a deep, nuanced, and accurate understanding. Complex concepts may require multiple facets of exploration, practice, and application. Step seven is critical. Learners are notorious for being able to explain a concept without fully understanding it. Students get adept at mimicking teacher explications or learning to give back what you, the teacher, said while bypassing all of the necessary processes that result in actually understanding. Unfortunately much of what consists of testing for understanding in schooling is assessing whether or not the student can explain it like the teacher did, rather than assessing understanding. Meaning, your students can get 100% "correct" on a test and still not have learned anything. When you teach a concept follow the correct procedure outlined and you will help your students acquire a deeper understanding of the concept while avoiding misunderstanding.

Teaching theology in the seminary is challenging. Many students, burning with zeal to do the “real work” of ordained ministry, pastoral care, often cannot immediately perceive theology’s role in that endeavor. Its utility for building community, performing diaconal service, celebrating liturgies, or providing spiritual formation is often not as apparent to them as it is to us. I have found that one way to defuse students’ skepticism toward theology is by early, direct, and repeated emphasis on the relationship between theological imagination and the embodied practice of faith. Once students catch a glimpse of how theological symbols function (thank you, Elizabeth Johnson!) and, conversely, how practices shape theological symbols, they more readily apprehend how preaching, teaching, and living good theology are essential to providing the pastoral care they expect seminary will train them to give. Last July, I participated in the Wabash Center’s Teaching with Digital Media workshop for the express purpose of developing more tools to help students connect the study of theology to the practice of ministry. As part of an exercise during the workshop, I reconceived a paper assignment at the end of the first term of a two-semester introduction to theology sequence I teach annually. I turned it into an outward-facing digital theology project. Having students dip their toes into doing a bit of public theology as the culminating task of a semester of study designed to demonstrate the link between conceptual and practical theologies seemed like it would further my pedagogical goals. The assignment I gave them was to imagine themselves the director of adult formation at a church and to create an original meme (a still image or a GIF) for the formation-program Facebook page of the church. The meme was to communicate the importance of preserving a robust concept of sin in Christian theology and practice. Students had to share the meme as broadly as possible and solicit feedback on it. They then needed to write a brief paper that would (1) explain, in conversation with the relevant course texts, the theological choices made in creating the meme, and (2) report and reflect on how the meme was received and what the student learned from this as a theologian. The results were remarkable. [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="511"] Used courtesy of Nora Boerner, CDSP M.Div. student[/caption] Students created memes that were sometimes provocative, sometimes humorous, sometimes both. The richest and most sophisticated of them, not surprisingly, were produced by the students whose theological rationales were the most nuanced. What was gratifying about this was that they themselves realized this connection. They were able to grasp how easy it is to communicate theology sloppily and saw that providing a message consonant with the Good News requires a deep understanding of what that central communication is. If one is going to distill the Gospel into capsule form, such as a meme, with as little distortion as possible, solid theology is required. In cases in which viewers received a message different from the intent, students benefitted from a first-hand education in how easy it is to be misunderstood when concepts are not handled with sufficient care, and they could appreciate that this can have unintended negative effects on one’s audience and thus impair the pastoral relationship. [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="451"] Used courtesy of Sunshine Dulnuan, CDSP MTS student[/caption] Some students were made anxious by the assignment because of lack of familiarity with meme culture or trepidation over engaging in public theological commentary. Confronting both of these anxieties is important for church leaders in training. Effective public communication in the visual and syntactical languages various publics use is crucial for those charged with mission, discipleship, and evangelism (the three foci of Church Divinity School of the Pacific’s program of formation). This may mean learning idioms quite different from one’s default mode of communication, and needing to translate theology well from one into the other. The anxiety this assignment provoked was, to my mind, the one commonly experienced when confronting a developmental challenge, and so it was, in the end, a productive anxiety. [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="405"] Used courtesy of Joanna Benskin, CDSP M.Div. student[/caption] This media-based assignment contributed nicely to my overall pedagogical objectives. Students were required to produce and disseminate a micro-theology expressive of their developing theological imaginations. They communicated a formational message with a theological foundation they could articulate and justify. They were thus given an opportunity to enter intellectually and affectively (and also tentatively and gently) into the arena of public theological exchange and to grasp how challenging, indispensable, and even, yes, pastoral, the discipline of theology can—and, in the context of these students’ particular vocations, must—be.

One of the most unfortunate practices in instruction is a teacher trying to get “right answers” from students. This is not to say that getting your students to get it right is a bad thing–in fact, it’s very desirable. Usually what happens, however, is that the teacher is engaged in teaching a concept and then pauses to “test” to see if students are getting it. The teacher asks a question intended to solicit a right answer, then is satisfied when one or two students answer correctly. The trap is that in the mind of the teacher a right answer indicates that learning has taken place and the student understands the concept. The truth is that a “right answer” may merely indicate that the learner has learned to mimic the teacher’s explanation—or maybe the learner made a lucky guess! When I was in grade school, I was chosen to be the spokesperson for an exhibit at the annual science fair. My job was to stand in front of a large container of water upon which were two small model boats. One model was intact and floated on the surface, but the other model had a hole in it. When I placed the second model boat on the surface of the water it would soon take on water and sink. I remember that my job was to explain to people why a boat with a hole in its hull sinks. I was chosen for the job because apparently I gave the "right" explanation well. But I have to confess that I was well aware that I didn’t really understand what it was that I was explaining! Even as I was giving the explanation to enraptured groups of students and teachers, I was keenly aware that I didn’t comprehend what I was talking about. I’d learned to mimic my science teacher’s explanation, but I didn’t understand it. Even when a learner gives a right answer, the skilled teacher will use the opportunity to follow up on how the learner arrived at the correct answer. Effective teachers assess understanding of the concepts being learned, not just test for “right answers.” In other words, effective teachers do not just focus on what a student says in an answer, but also assesses how a student arrived at the answer. One way to help learners acquire deeper understanding is to be more intentional in your response to student answers. When responding to a learner’s correct answer, don’t just say, “Right!” or “That’s correct!” Respond in a way that will both enforce the correct answer and help teach the group about why an answer is correct and how to arrive at the right answer. Teacher responses that include information about why the learner’s answer is correct, such as rephrasing the response to emphasize factors that make the answer correct, or the steps or methods used to get the correct answer, are helpful to other learners who are in the process of learning the reasoning behind why something is so, or who are trying to figure out the steps for arriving at an accurate answer to the question being posed. You can help students move beyond mimicking a right answer and toward comprehension by: - Amplifying the student’s response - Restating, modifying, or rephrasing the learner’s response and redirect for further discussion - Asking the student to explain how he or she arrived at the answer - Asking the student to provide an example or a corollary - Probing for further discussion. By the way, can you explain why a boat sinks?

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