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Course design in online learning juggles a range of factors to produce an effective learning environment. For instance, most of us who teach online must navigate the expectations of our institution. Maybe a requirement to adhere to some external standard, like Quality Matters, exists. Perhaps the learning management system defines what one might do. Some schools require the use of a design consultant, while others throw faculty into the deep end of course development without any support. And, then, of course, we always must account for the students. I tend to boil online class structure down to the following: consistency matters, less is more, clarity in all things, and never lose the personal, and course design is never done. Consistency matters speaks to the basic principle of setting the same pattern week in and week out. The freedom of asynchronous online learning (work on your own from anywhere, anytime) differs markedly from a student knowing to turn up on specific days, at a given time, and in a set location. Many undergraduates still need the discipline built in. Setting repetitive due dates, for instance, allows a learner to integrate the class into her or his calendar and to schedule other obligations (e.g., work, childcare, recreation) accordingly. Organizing the course materials via a weekly agenda in a fixed place enables the students to know where to look for readings/videos and how to determine what to turn in, where, and by when.  Less is more applies in several areas. Only the rare student will read every line of my syllabus, carefully parse my directions, or watch every video. I try to help here. Creating my syllabus using Moodle’s “Book” for example, allows me to generate a Table of Contents. Students then might skip to what they prioritize (like grading) and only refer to policies (academic integrity, disability accommodation, etc.) when needed. I also use this function for the weekly assignments. Students can bypass the learning goals the University wants posted and immediately access the readings/videos and the worksheets.    Similarly, in video presentations, if I can do 2-4 minutes rather than 10 or 15, I stand a better chance of a student listening all the way through. But even when I go long, I cannot waste their time. Good video production requires thinking through what is most important, planning out my commentary and visuals, and speaking at the pace of something like a Crash Course lesson. Students then tend to stick with it and even re-view when they need a second or third shot at an idea because it is not burdensome or scattered. Clarity in all things means avoiding confusion by providing step-by-step instructions for every assignment, a rubric for how it will be assessed, links to technical support for what students might need to accomplish it (such as how to make a video), statements about when precisely to anticipate feedback, and a forum to pose their questions–again with response time being key. Online learning lacks the luxury of chatting face-to-face in class about what I want to see or how the grading is coming along. Instead, I must anticipate, as well as draw from experience, what kinds of questions students raise and plan accordingly to answer them at the outset. Never lose the personal takes me back to when I first started out in online and most of my students brought with them the expectations of a face-to-face environment. They wanted to see my face and hear my voice. They wanted not automatically graded assignments, but my personal comments. I also learned the value of students hearing from me “live” every week, even when everything might be running like clockwork. A weekly note to the class or a quick video about the connection of a current event to what we are doing reminds them I am there and active and paying attention. Sending individual feedback on something as mundane as a discussion board post says I take their ideas seriously. I also, then, get more students making appointments with me to work through issues or to chat about their interests. These interactions make use of my expertise in more areas than content delivery and that is, as we all know, where most authentic learning happens. Finally, course design is never done. Each iteration of a class teaches us something new about what works and what we can do better. Making the time to reflect on the specifics, or to learn new tricks by engaging with other faculty, brings pedagogy to the forefront and that, to my mind, always benefits the learning experience.

The power of affirmation lies in the acknowledgement of a job well done.  When colleagues applaud our success, we feel more a part of the enterprise, more connected, and more accepted. Being affirmed is being seen, noticed, made visible in erasing workplaces where so much of our work feels like it goes unnoticed or simply taken for granted. Feelings of isolation and separation are lightened with applause. Recently, I facilitated a workshop on teamwork and collaboration for a group of women who work as administrative assistants for a large corporation. For the most part, they feel unappreciated and under-valued. I led them in an activity which was intended to spark appreciation amongst them. I divided them into pairs and instructed each pair to interview the other. The interviewee was to share two of her recent successes at work. Then the roles were switched. When it came time to report back, each pair member was told to tell the entire group one of the interviewee’s successes for which the entire group would then applaud wildly. I gave the instructions and asked if there were any questions. One woman commented that if we applaud too loudly security might come. I told her we would risk it. The group quickly divided into pairs and began the conversations. After a bit, I reconvened the group and asked the first pair to report. I reminded the group to get ready to applaud for each person. The first woman told of her partner’s success. I began applauding and the group members joined in. With each success story, I extended the applause and added a cheer and called out the woman’s name. The group followed suit. Smiles appeared on each face, and the woman being applauded sat up a little straighter in her chair and smiled--a little bit. By the time we finished, the energy in the room was vibrant. It was an affirmation fest! At the end of the last session, as our benediction, we repeated the exercise. Rather than being interviewed, each woman told of an accomplishment she had in the last week or so. Without prompting, the women applauded wildly for each other. Security did not come. I encouraged the women to find ways to routinely inquire about each other’s professional successes as well as personal accomplishments. I ended the session, gathered my belongings, and opened the door to leave. A senior executive was standing in the hallway. He looked surprised when the door opened. He commented, without smiling or making eye contact, in a chastising tone, “You all are very raucous.” I said, “We most certainty are,” as I walked past him without stopping. The postal service was still the preferred mode of communication for important documents when I was working on my dissertation. I had sent my advisor a draft of two chapters. When the mail was delivered to our home, there was a thick, thick envelope. I looked at the address label. The huge envelope was for me, from my advisor. My heart sank. I was mortified. Why was the package sooo thick? I assumed that she did not like my work and had included the paperwork needed for me to withdraw from the program. I assumed she hated my work and wrote, in many pages, to inform me of my inadequacy. My fears paralyzed me. I left the package unopened for a day–too afraid to open it. Finally–after having driven my family crazy with my whining and self-criticism–I opened the package. Much to my surprise, relief, and delight, my advisor had so thoroughly read my work that her comments, affirmations, and edits were two pages for every one page I had written. My advisor had done the closest read I had ever received on my work. Her extensive comments were on the ways I could continue to strengthen already sound chapters. Her affirmation reduced me to tears. What she thought of my work meant the world to me. Hearing that my work was good and could be made better was a life-changing experience. Knowing that she poured over my work, considered my assertions, and resonated with my argument, made me take my own thoughts more seriously. It made me want to write better, deeper, more clearly. She had sent me a package of affirmation. When I was in elementary school, on report card day, my brother and I received $1 for every A, 50 cents for every B, nothing for a C, and we owed our parents for anything lower than a C. My parents were not paying us for the grades we made. They were affirming us, in a very tangible and pleasant way, for our hard work. They were teaching us that our good grades needed to be celebrated. They wanted us to know that our good grades were noticed and that our good grades were a point of pride. After we were paid by my father, my brother would ask to go to the store so he could spend his bounty. I, more frugal, put mine in the log cabin bank on my dresser. I was planning on buying a blue Ford Mustang on my 16th birthday. Our faculty has a ritual which has been quite meaningful for me when it was been my turn, and for which I love to participate for others. At faculty meetings, when someone is tenured and promoted, we read aloud excerpts of the letter sent to the Trustee Board. The excerpts extol the value of the work by the celebrated colleague. The excerpts make reference to their successes and accomplishments, and proclaim the good efforts of the colleague. Once the words are spoken, the colleague receives thunderous applause and the entire faculty lifts champagne glasses and toasts the colleague for a job well done. It is an elegant gesture. It is a moment when the collected body affirms the individual for the contribution made for the flourishing of the whole. It is a lovely moment. Performance, per se, is not the world I know. Beyond third grade, I have never taken a bow with other cast members of a play; I have never bowed after performing with a band or choir. What I have experienced is, after giving a scholarly paper at a guild meeting, noticing the decibels of applause after my paper. In those moments, I am appreciative of the applause. If/when the applause seems to linger, even a bit, I am especially pleased that the audience signals their affirmation of my work. It is a small thing, but it sustains me, lifts me; there is no applause after writing a book. A challenge of teaching adult students is that they want to be affirmed for what they already know. When the desire for affirmation is at the expense of openness to learning, this is not applause worthy. Refusing to learn, yet still wanting applause, can be disconcerting to the hopeful teacher. I recently survived end-of-the-semester student presentations. For the students who engaged the assignment, worked at exploring new materials, and created a meaningful and feasible project, I gave strong and clear affirmation. For at least three students I clapped loudly, uproariously, gladly. For the students who presented half-baked projects which lacked thoughtfulness and made me, at times, question my vocational choices, I did not give negative words of criticism. I instead sat in silence, withholding the anticipated affirmation. Students seemed confused when their paltry presentations did not garner the expected affirmation. I am disappointed when they choose to opt-out of working hard in a course they have enrolled in under their own volition. I am amazed when they are confused about not getting affirmation for poor work.  Here’s the thing about applause. It is a gracious and generous gesture which is needed by us all. It is not to be squandered or provided disingenuously. It is not to be demanded for lazy efforts. The sound of applause and the feeling it conjures is that for which so many of us yearn. This yearning is not selfish or grandiose. It is a heartfelt desire to do work that counts, to do work that is meaningful and held in high regard by our peers and elders. The applause of a single human being is of great consequence.

In 1998, the movie, You’ve Got Mail, cast an unlikely couple, played by Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, who fell in love over email exchanges. The film brought to the big screen the unforgettable computer-voiced announcement “You’ve got mail.” The scenes were classic and represented many email users who eagerly anticipated hearing their computers say “You’ve got mail” each time a new electronic mail message arrived.  The Hanks and Ryan characters would painstakingly compose an email message, hesitate, and then hit “enter” or “return.” On the other end of the dial-up Internet connection was the recipient who sat on the edge of his or her seat, just waiting for something interesting, encouraging, or perhaps inspiring, to arrive from the anonymous love interest. Much has changed in digital communication since the days of dial-up, AOL, and “You’ve got mail.” One thing that hasn’t changed, however, is our eagerness for quick, if not, instantaneous messaging. Whether or not one likes this stage of humanity’s relationship with technology, the weight of this cultural phenomenon falls on each of us. For better or worse, communication at the speed of light has become part of the culture of higher education as well, especially in an online learning space. Picture a married, mother working fulltime for a congregation taking seminary courses online. Her life circumstances offer her limited work hours for furthering her education. While reading through her course module for the week, she stumbles across a reading that is listed as “required,” but the link is broken. She has just a few hours to finish her assignment, and now she feels lost. The student messages the professor and sits and waits for a reply. How long should she have to wait? What expectations does she have of the professor? How well has the professor been communicating with her so far in the course? These questions are the kinds of concerns that speak to teacher-student engagement in online courses. In this blog, I offer a few tips for teachers to consider when it comes to online teacher-student engagement. While much has been written about teacher presence, the importance of communication, best practices of when to respond to students and the like, the primary focus of this entry is the importance of communication, meaningful facilitation, and commitment to making an impact on student formation. Communication Set clear expectations for yourself and tell the students. If you follow the old 48-hour rule—that is, you plan to respond to students within 48 hours of their questions— then let your students know this is your practice. If you are more of a 24/7 kind of online teacher, let them know that too. I personally don’t respond to anything over weekends and holidays, and I tell students my boundaries at the beginning of the course or before major school breaks. Otherwise, I respond to their questions daily and interact within the course on the days I pre-establish with my classes, normally on or the day after deadlines. Tell your students how you prefer to be reached. It’s up to you to decide how you plan to be available, but make sure your students know how you prefer to be contacted. I respond to emails faster than any message service in learning management systems; so I frequently remind them to email me if they have a question. Facilitation Establish a pattern of engagement with online discussions and forums. If you were in a classroom face-to-face, would you let class discussion fill an hour of valuable class time without your guiding the conversation? Probably not. The same is true for online discussions. Interject comments alongside your students’ posts to provide scaffolding, encouragement, and teachable moments. Remember, if you do not post, you are not present. Give feedback on assignments that prompt learning. Whether you use a rubric, points system, letter grades, or a combination of these, make sure your students know why they got the grade they were assigned. Frankly, this tip is just good education and not limited to online education, but without non-verbal glances, after class questions, and hallway conversations, online students feel lost if they don’t hear any feedback from you. Impact Commit to your online students the same way you would commit to a student who is sitting in your classroom or standing in your office. The demands of higher education sometimes cause us to run from one urgency to another. Too often the students at a distance get ignored, “out of sight, out of mind,” or something like that. Resist the temptation to think of them as faceless names. They are individuals who, from their perspectives, want to be connected with your school, the course, and with you as their professor. They are also paying tuition and have a reasonable expectation to receive a comparable experience to those who are face-to-face. Try to get to know them. Pray for them. Memorize their names as you would any of your classes. Offer to assist them with course matters outside of class as you might your residential students. The students want to hear from you, and they appreciate all of your interactions with them. Your level of engagement with students can make or break your course. Communicate frequently and clearly. Scaffold learning through facilitation. Demonstrate how you care about your online students. These three simple tasks will create the learning space your students need for achieving the education they seek.

A pedagogical community consists of at least three elements: the student, the professor, and the subject. The intersection of these three elements has the potential to create what Parker Palmer (1998) calls “a community of truth.” In order to create this community of truth in an online course, the instructor has to consider in the design of the course where community happens, so that students can begin to “know one another.” One of the best, and perhaps most difficult, places to start is at the beginning of the course. For a number of years, the start of my online courses were, quite frankly, boring and not very engaging for students. This, in turn, caused a lot of angst in me, the instructor. As I shared my dilemma with a colleague, she suggested, “Why don’t you make an assignment in the first week to produce a video about you and have each student in the course do likewise?” I started to do that at the beginning of each of my online courses and that advice from my colleague has helped me and my students begin to “know one another.” Below are the instructions that I put in the syllabus for this assignment. I have found that it is doable even for students who have technological challenges. There are many apps/software out there; I use an app/software called Animoto. It’s easy to use, it provides choices of background and music, and it’s free! Purpose:  An introduction is often your best chance to establish yourself as a distinct individual with something unique to offer the world. Most people default to the standard, “Hi my name is . . .  I live in . . . I work at . . .” For this assignment, you will move beyond such a standard introduction and create a 1 minute and 30 second (minimum) Animoto about you. You will also write a short paragraph to accompany the video. While a resume is a professional document, consider how an Animoto can be an innovative way of conveying the same information. What sort of audience would prefer this format? Instructions: Step 1: Start by establishing the essential information you think should be included when introducing yourself to others. Obviously, your full name is important, but you may also include your age, your field of study, ethnicity, home town, hobbies, some details of past experience, accomplishments, future goals, etc.  Step 2: For this assignment you must consider appropriate images and music that will highlight information about you while maintaining a professional look. Draft a few ideas, sort through your photographs, or Google images and arrange the “story.” Step 3: Write a text that highlights the images and/or helps put them in the proper context. Step 4: Select the music that best reflects the image of yourself that you want to send out to the world. You may want to select the music first and let the rhythm and lyrics guide your story. Submission guidelines:  Post your biographical Animoto and paragraph to the Introduction Forum. You must watch all the Animotos and respond to at least three other Animotos (not the instructor’s). Your responses should be thoughtful, constructive, and more than one sentence. Comment on similarities, differences, enquiries, wonderings. What makes this first assignment most interesting for me are the comments from the students to one another’s Animoto and short paragraphs in the discussion forums. The curiosity that students have for one another is gold! The benefit: the course begins on an encouraging note that helps students be more transparent and authentic with one another in a way that  helps build positive momentum for the course. I’m sure there are many good ways to start off a course right that builds pedagogical community—this is just one that has been tremendously helpful to me.   (You can click and watch my academic Animoto (https://animoto.com/play/Zh0oXpqBBZt61q0kvx7h6w) which shows where I went to school, where I teach, and a bit about my family. )

Teaching and learning become rich and exciting when any classroom makes room for and taps into the resources of diverse backgrounds, contexts, and identities. Also, it’s the right thing to do. When I began teaching online, I knew classroom diversities might increase due to broadening access, but I suspected student diversities could also be less visible due to the individuating and sometimes alienating aspects of technology. Yet in online contexts, foregrounding and integrating room for diversities into teaching and learning is surprisingly easier than you might imagine. Online students have more ways to participate in conversation, experience greater equity from the outset, and often exhibit deeper transparency. How can an online educator make more of diversities in a virtual classroom and tap into their teaching and learning potential? Increased access to classroom diversities was an important draw for me into online education because I teach at a theological school in the far eastern corner of Tennessee. During a 2014 sabbatical, I traveled throughout the United States, Europe, Africa, and Mexico. In many places, vital and thriving ministry was happening without good access to theological education. Many of the people I encountered would not be able to relocate to my school. I began imagining a classroom where a male, Kenyan micro-lender in the Mathare slum district of Nairobi and a Chicago-based, African American woman in urban church planting could have access to theological education and both be in the same room learning together and from one another. The kind of diversities I imagined while traveling now exist in my online contexts, and I aim to embrace them as an asset in theological education. How can online teaching and learning make room for greater diversities? Begin by welcoming student engagement that makes connections to students’ own contexts and backgrounds. Then, incentivize, encourage, and reward these connections across your course design: in opening introductions; discussion posting; student selection of readings, assignments, and projects; and integrative exercises like papers or exams. In all learning tasks and rubrics, objectives should include making resourceful connections to one’s own history, identity, or current contexts. Keep students engaged and invested while simultaneously making learning moments more tangible by emphasizing the contribution of student diversities to learning. Doing so makes diversities a more visible and constructive part of teaching and learning. Students are invited to witness connections happening in the work of their peers and are drawn to do the same. They begin to hear, learn, and feel challenged by their own and others’ diverse perspectives and orientations. Yet, I’ve learned along the way that the contours of online classroom diversities are unpredictable and can unfold in unexpected ways. For example, a white, male American student in an online course entered imagining he had no resources from his own context for theological learning. He named his rural and poor upbringing, and his ministry experience in both conservative and progressive West Virginia congregations as limitations. In response, other students helped him recognize the displacements and pressures that were indeed shaping his theological convictions. Identity in online contexts includes complex and shifting aspects of race, sexuality, trauma, geography, economics, citizenship, displacements, and more. Often, students’ own self-awareness around this multi-layered complexity is shifting in the midst of a course and in response to readings, peer-to-peer engagement, and/or assignments. Hosting spaces where students are invited to name what they are learning from their own contexts and backgrounds and from those of their peers becomes vital. Online learning tends to feel more “democratic” because it allows all learners to enter discussions under similar parameters. But online educators must be aware of persisting inequities. Safety can be heightened by using netiquette guidelines and checking in personally with students when they shift into overly aggressive or suddenly silent postures. Yet, if “democratic” means majority opinions rule, minoritized students will be susceptible to overt and subtle forms of silencing by their peers, while being more exposed and vulnerable in the process. In my experience, subtle forms of deflecting peer voices happens when students champion what they already (think they) know, rather than sharing what they are actively learning. I prioritize and reward only the latter. Surfacing diversities that already exist, and making room for more diversities, enhances learning in the online classroom. It’s risky and needs adaptive and adapting postures, a self-aware and engaged teacher, and rethinking of all elements of course design. I remind students regularly that part of our learning together is about how theological engagement and conversation becomes welcoming and constructive. In that engagement and conversation, every person is a vital and valued contributor in the process of teaching and learning. Making more of diversities enhances every potential for learning, empathy, and relevance.

We live in exciting times. Even just 10 years ago, the technology to teach the kind of online course that I would dream about was simply unavailable. But not anymore. Today the technical tools needed to teach a course can scale the heights of one’s imagination. They are not only available, but affordable for instructors. In this post, I want to geek out over tech tools, especially as they relate to the online Beginning Greek class I am teaching this academic year. Unicode language keyboards If students are going to learn a language online, they need a no-hassle way of easily typing its alphabet. I am currently teaching on Canvas but what I say here would apply to Sakai, Blackboard, Moodle, or any other learning management system (LMS). The best keyboard available for most languages is Keyman (latest version 10.0; for Greek, pick the Greek Classical keyboard). It uses unicode (or ‘universal encoding’), which means that the keyboardist no longer has to worry about what fonts are installed on a given computer. In any font, when you type in Greek or another selected language, the output is consistent. The Greek classical keyboard is especially well-designed, complete with a tutorial and keyboard layout visual. It is available for Windows, macOS, the iPhone, iPad, and Android interfaces, and best yet, it is free. There is even a nice selection of ancient Hebrew keyboard options. Video production and encoding As I suggested in my previous blog, the language instructor ultimately needs to create personal instructional videos. I produced over 80 of them (7-10 minutes each) to cover the content of Greek 1 and 2 (two semesters). I quickly discovered that a microphone is more important than a video camera. Audio quality is more important than video quality. Since many universities now require captions with videos, the better the sound, the more accurate are the automated subtitle scripts produced by YouTube and other caption services. I find that I did far less editing of the subtitle scripts when my microphone and sound quality improved. Here’s my advice: invest in a high quality microphone, save on cheaper video cameras. I particularly like the Yeti USB Microphone ($128.73) for my laptop, but if one is recording off a tablet or phone, the Boya 3.5mm Microphone ($19.95) is excellent for shutting out background noise. But built-in microphones on your computer and phones are the worst. To avoid echoes and the way-off-in-the-distance muffled sound these produce, get a good microphone. Some decent video cam’s include: the Logitech 930 series ($68.00), or simply use your tablet or smartphone camera.   Once the video is produced, the course designer will need a good editor and encoder. I always want something simple and easy-to-use. Screencast-o-matic is excellent for cutting out video I don’t like. I can insert slides, text, photos, and even external video if I wish. It is a subscription service ($36 for 3 years or $1/month) and well worth it to save much grief for the less technically savvy person (myself included). It also encodes the video for easy upload onto YouTube, Vimeo, or other video channel sites. Headset for video conferencing and synchronous teaching It just takes one. Just one computer with bad feedback on its sound system and the entire video conferencing session is a disaster. Whether using Zoom, Big Blue Button, Skype, or other conferencing tools, getting a headset with microphone and asking your students to buy it are crucial to eliminate screeching distractions. Especially if one meets with a small group tutorial session online, or even a large synchronous classroom setting, having everyone log into the session with a headset will allow all to be heard without nasty feedback or echoes. My recommendation (and it’s cheap) is the Mpow USB headset/microphone ($22.99). I would add the headset as part of the textbook order.  Recommended OER’s Lastly, there are many free open educational resources (OERs, pronounced “oars”). I was surprised to find many good Greek tools online. The United Bible Society, for example, has the entire UBS5 Greek New Testament available for public use. Greek professors often post their own videos and other resources to help students (here’s a fantastic one called Daily Dose of Greek). The Perseus project has a parsing engine online for New Testament and other Greco-Roman texts. There is an exciting world of free OERs ready to be employed by the innovative course designer. The tough part is choosing which ones to use, but that is a welcome problem to tackle.

“Doc, if I teach what you are talking about I’ll get fired!” “Talking about this in seminary is fine, but if I try to talk about white supremacy on my job –won’t I get fired?” “If I talk about racism and oppression in my church-I’ll get fired.” In classroom conversations that teach against domination, systemic hatred, violence, and social dehumanization, students begin to consider what it might be like to take these agendas to the places where they have leadership responsibility, authority, and obligation. Students become concerned about what might be at stake should they take up the lofty ideals of equity, liberation, and social holiness. The concern for personal risk is not pervasive, but it is certainly a concern which is voiced. Once students learn a bit about employing liberative pedagogies they become concerned about employment stability, the consequences of moral agency, and the backlash of courageous acts. Students feel inspired, intrigued, and curious about new approaches to the sins of xenophobia, white nationalism, racism, misogyny, Islamophobia, and homophobia, only to be halted by the personal fear of communal rejection, the possibility of shunning, and the chance that they will get fired. After reading great thinkers like bell hooks, Paulo Freire, Katie G. Cannon, Parker Palmer, and Audre Lorde, students lean into the conversation of social transformation and church accountability. They “try-on” the ideas of liberation and the hope of systemic equity for minoritized, economically disenfranchised, and those seeking asylum. There is a thrill to these taboo and previously unconsidered notions of good community and spiritual maturity. Quickly though, too quickly, the thrill meanders into, or slams into, the reality of being a neophyte leader in an established system. Their questions wither into concerns of self-preservation and selfishness–“If I try to do this stuff, will I get fired?” Critical, prophetic wisdom shrivels. Rather than bringing ease, deep study plunges the student into discomfort, dilemma, and the promise of hardship, sacrifice, and possible loss of power, authority, and social stature. In asking if they will get fired, I do not believe my students are having a crisis of conscience–their conscience is clear. They say they want liberation for all persons–and I believe them. Their dilemma is in falling victim to selfishness and the illusion of security. They are afraid that if they lead people toward change, and teach toward an ethic of compassion, love, empathy, and mercy, that this will be such a drastic shift away from the current norm of white supremacy and patriarchy that they will be punished. These genuine concerns must be considered in the seminary classroom if learning about justice is to be real and realized. On the days I am impatient with their self-centered concerns, my answer to their genuine, albeit uninspired, concern is to quote science fiction writer Octavia Butler, “So be it. See to it.” With this statement I am not so much trying to be callous as I am trying to portray what my grandmother told me: “We do not fight flesh and blood, but powers and principalities.” What she meant was that we are obligated to speak our truth then trust in the Spirit who would see us through the fight; our truth and trust must be in God. This is a hard lesson which sometimes takes a lifetime. My grandmother would also import Emily Dickinson’s advice to “tell the truth but tell it slant,” her version of “.. . be wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16). When I am more patient, I linger over the question of self-preservation. I carefully explain that the work of teaching to transgress, if done effectively, will likely result at some point in life with the loss of favor, friends, reputation, money, and yes, might result in getting fired. I want my students, even the young ones, to have more fear of the harm and violence of living in a racist society than fear of personal sacrifice. I want them to fear being unfaithful to what they say they care about and believe. I want their fear to motivate them rather than paralyze them. When I ask the student who had the courage to voice their fear of being fired why they would want to lead a congregation or institution who would suppress their impulse to fight against the status quo, I am asking why would they want to squander the gifts they offer for the needs of the world to a people who are uninterested in, or unmoved by, the suffering of the world. Heretofore, my students have heard this as a rhetorical inquiry and no one has responded to this query – not yet. I tell them that failure (like getting fired) is likely one of the better learning opportunities in the teaching journey. Surely, few of us have the wherewithal to prescribe failure or to sabotage our own career, even for justice work. However, when the surprise of failure finds us, we must know this likely signals new opportunity, new fulfillment, the chance for deeper contemplation about the meanness of the world and our role of leadership. Some of my most creative teaching episodes have come from my failures. I must remember to tell my students more stories of when I have failed, what I learned and, most important, point to the fact that I have lived to tell about it. Failure, even when deadly, has not as yet meant my demise. We tell students to live the question – or at least I do. But, they must live the deeper questions and not the shallow ones. If their best reflection question is “Suppose I get fired?” then this narcissistic inquiry will embolden the status quo. Shallow reflexive questions will only serve to undergird mediocrity and leave domination unchecked.   Living the big questions of life means, in the 21st century, coming to grips with the fact that there is “no place to escape the diversity of the human community” (P. Palmer). Our pursuit of the deep questions in the public view of teaching will help other people to do things they really want to do, but are too afraid to do by themselves. People want to be good neighbors, want to welcome the stranger, want to live in harmony with dignity, respect and peace. Our job, as learned people, is to provide them with excuses, rationales, and ways to honor these virtues of justice. Those of us who are privileged to have studied cannot retreat into small menial jobs of maintaining the status quo or regress into living quiet lives of desperation hoping to be rescued by the leadership of someone else. Those of us who are educated must take up the big, big, big jobs of life like teaching justice, spreading mercy, and modeling love. We must refuse to be seduced by shallow subsistence which promises a paycheck. Our job of justice is to enunciate so clearly that truth is unmistakable–the truth that there are no inferior people. This enunciation will likely get all of us fired.

One of my favorite movies growing up was the The Sound of Music. I loved—and still love—the opening scene: the vast panoramic of Julie Andrews, arms outstretched, as Maria, belting at the top of her lungs: “The hills are alive with the sound of music!” Each song and every word from the film is etched in my memory! Perhaps you, too, can recall the scene where Maria teaches the children to sing: “Let’s start at the very beginning; a very good place to start. When you read you begin with A-B-C. When you sing you begin with Do-Re-Mi, Do-Re-Mi. The first three notes just happen to be Do-Re-Mi, Do-Re-Mi, Do-Re-Mi-Fa-So-La-Te-Do!” By the end of the film, the whole family has mastered the art of singing and it leads, literally, to their freedom. Mastery comes with a solid foundation and practice; with learning the basics, making mistakes, asking questions and correcting course. Mastery requires starting at the beginning—so that a certain freedom can surface once the basics are etched in our memories—even when learning online. As teachers, we need to provide an opportunity for students to master the basics not only of content, but also of the learning environment; to develop the thought and muscle memory of working with technology. Only then can they set aside the concern of technology and truly enter into the freedom and joy of the online learning environment. The greatest support I find for students in effective online teaching is to create a “Getting Started” module for every course I build. The language and idea of “Getting Started” is owed to the training module I completed with Quality Matters (https://www.qualitymatters.org/). I keep this language because it invites engagement with the full range of students, from neophyte to novice to expert in the online learning environment. All students are invited to review the basics. Some can be skimmed over; others perhaps not. The point is: there are many notes in this environment which need to become second nature and I teach them here. A typical table of contents for such a module contains the following foundational elements: (Do) How to upload your picture to your account, (Re) How to forward school email to your personal email account, (Mi) A tour of the course site, (Fa) How to post an original thread and respond to peers in a discussion forum, (So) How to access privatized videos, (La) How to create a video using PowerPoint or Zoom, (Te) How to submit and retrieve assignments, (Do) How to access the library e-reserves and more. These foundational elements are delivered primarily via videos and PDF documents using screen images highlighted with step-by-step instructions. These supports are made available the week before class begins and remain accessible for the entirety of the course. Students are encouraged to explore this module prior to the beginning of class to learn the A-B-Cs and Do-Re-Mis of the learning environment. I also provide an opportunity for a simple online discussion and assignment submission in advance of the course start to foster some familiarity and initial comfort with these processes. This module is partially transferable from course to course, so I am not re-creating the wheel each course. Personalizing a few videos however—such as a tour of the course site—communicates my care for the current group of students. As a practice, I meet with online students individually via Zoom one or two times a semester. During these sessions, I inquire what I could do better to support their transition to online learning and also how I can continue to support their learning in this environment. Last semester I learned—unfortunately late in the game—that a number of students never learned how to use the library’s database resources. This naturally impacted the quality of their research, learning and integration. As a result, moving forward, each course will contain a video showing how to do research using the vast electronic scholarly resources available through the library system. This will find its home in the “Getting Started” module. So remember, while we grow beyond neophyte, novice and toward master teachers in the online environment, the neophyte online learner will always be with us. While students need the “Getting Started” module to varying degrees, let’s keep providing the basic A-B-Cs and Do-Re-Mis because there will always be need for some students to start at the very beginning so they can set aside the concern of technology and truly enter into the freedom and joy of the online learning environment.

“I feel like I’m constantly grading now.”  My colleague’s comment was offered as a lament over so much more assessment now that our school had transitioned to an online curriculum. That online courses required more grading was a surprise, and a mystery, to me at first too. Why should the delivery format make such a difference to how a course gets graded? There is an answer to that question, and the nature of learning provides the answer. Online learning is learning mediated by distance and time. It doesn’t have the same social component, or the immediacy of interaction, that learning in class does. Going to class—and therefore, presumably, learning—constitutes the primary blocks of a residential student’s day, but learning done by students in an online school is often piled onto or squeezed into a daily schedule that is not otherwise centered around education. Online learning, therefore, occurs in isolation from many of the reinforcements to comprehension, inquiry, and creativity provided by face-to-face environments, e.g., shared space, informal conversation, direct and immediate access to professors, and even simple sensory aids like handouts, refreshments, show-and-tell objects, and rituals used to begin and end class. These sorts of things all contribute, in face-to-face education, to creating a learning environment that marks the moment of learning: “Now, here, learning is happening,” they convey.   In other words, they help sustain student engagement. Online instructors must find other ways to achieve what going to class achieves for residential students. We have to design our online courses in ways that grab our students’ attention and keep them motivated as they progress. We learn to employ strategies that encourage students to logon frequently, help them feel present within the online space and online community, provide them with frequent opportunities to verify their understanding of course content, to ask questions, to participate in discussion, to receive feedback, and to see their progress.  Frequent, small assessments constitute one of these strategies. They play a role in a larger ecology of learning that has many points and modes of engagement. Certainly, instructors can overload a course with too many little tasks and activities, but, generally speaking, lessons that are chunked into multiple small assignments keep students more engaged than do lessons consisting simply of reading and discussion—leading up to a big test or paper at the end of the course. In addition, when those smaller chunks are graded, students must complete them in order to succeed in the course. Grading creates a point of connection between student and professor, especially if it includes feedback and not just a number. As they accumulate, grades can provide students with a visual picture of their progress. This is the reason why online education can involve so much grading. It’s about engagement. It isn’t necessarily about the need to measure or evaluate every single thing an online student does. One does not even have to award numbers or letter grades each time.  (Continually having to decide where student work falls on a grading scale is what tires instructors like my colleague.) The larger point is that student engagement and motivation are keys to successful learning in general, no matter the delivery method. And this is what teaching online, with its seemingly endless assessment, has taught me about learning. There are many studies proving the connection between engagement and learning. Since I cannot do justice to them here, I will close by reflecting on my own experiences as a learner. Like many future academics, motivating myself to learn was never particularly hard and I got to study things that naturally aroused my curiosity. I did not need bells and whistles to make me interested. But there are always exceptions. When learning is obligatory or seems irrelevant, it’s been the graded assignments that have spurred me on. Several years ago, I had to take a course in driver safety to be allowed to shepherd students on field trips. The course didn’t involve any actual driving but, rather, watching videos and taking a test. I was largely bored and disengaged until it was time to be tested. Then my competitive nature kicked in. When I passed with a nearly perfect grade but did not receive 100%, I wanted to take the course over again!  To this day, I still remember the driving rule that I got wrong on that test.

I have a confession to make. For the longest time I have approached distance learning as the second best way to teach. I thought of it as a necessary evil in order to deliver theological education to those who could not receive instruction through the traditional face-to-face (hence F2F) classroom. Consequently, I approached teaching online as an effort to approximate the F2F experience but feeling that no matter what I do, I’ll always fall short of the “real thing.” I have since changed my mind. In my experience designing and implementing an online course to teach Biblical Greek for seminary students, I have discovered that there are principles and practices which do more than simply approximate the F2F experience—they surpass it. So what practices in the F2F setting can and should be approximated online? Here are two quick suggestions: 1) Create instructional videos as a means for students to receive course content. There are no short cuts to teaching the vocabulary, grammar, and syntax of any language. Over the course of one summer, I developed over 80 instructional videos of approximately 7-10 minutes each to cover the entire scope of beginning Greek grammar. Across two semesters, students will watch me on YouTube explain the pronunciation scheme of the Greek alphabet, read the biblical text out loud, and then address nouns, verbs, and other parts of speech. The instructional videos are the backbone to the content of the course. 2) Have students write out their homework assignments in a “messy” way. The textbook I use for the course is William Mounce’s The Basics of Biblical Greek. I ask students to work through the homework exercises by hand since no electronic version of the Greek workbook is currently available by the publisher. Students do the work in a “messy” way: they scribble notes, circle words, draw arrows, cross out and self-correct their assignments. Then they scan their work and upload it as a PDF onto the course management system (hence CMS) for grading. The “messy” way of completing the homework adds a tactile, motor-memory component to learning that many find helpful. It is worth trying to approximate this online as much as possible. When, or if, an electronic version of the workbook exercises becomes available from publishers, students can easily use an iPad or other tablet device plus stylus to approximate the “messy” by-hand learning experience. Now here are two methods of online instruction that I think supersede the F2F experience: 1) Assign audio and video recording exercises to students to upload for instructor review. Currently I am teaching Greek online and on campus. To my surprise, I have found that, overall, my online students read biblical Greek out loud better than the on-campus students. In the on-campus classroom, we practice pronouncing Greek during the first weeks of the course by reading 1 John 1 out loud. Students take turns reading a verse and we make the rounds until we corporately finish the whole text. For the online course, students don’t take turns reading just a few verses of 1 John 1. They have to read large sections of it on their own, record their reading, and upload it onto the CMS for me to grade. It takes time, but I listen to their recordings and write out my comments, or make my own recording, to send back to them so they can adjust their pronunciation. Every week, online students complete an A/V recording assignment but the on-campus class does not. As a result, the former read Greek better. 2) Form student-to-student cohorts. I cannot take credit for what follows. On their own, my online students formed a Facebook group where they exchange best study techniques, commiserate about the difficulties of the language, answer questions for one another, and share resources. While on-campus students also form study groups, these are typically much smaller in size, meet less frequently, and do not involve the entire class. The Facebook group invites the entire class to participate and they do. The level of collaboration is much more intense. I may even suggest to the on-campus students that they form online cohorts. Sometimes commuters don’t have access to study groups. Forming a Facebook cohort would allow them to join. These are just a few suggestions I offer as I stumble my way through teaching Greek online. I have been just as much a learner as an instructor in this journey. The pedagogical discoveries have been exhilarating!