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"We are all wanderers on this planet.”[1] In my wanderings through the written word over the last month, I met the American poet Robert Lax (1915-2000). For a time his greatest claim to fame was his deep and lasting friendship with the Trappist monk Thomas Merton, yet Lax’s contributions as a poet are being unearthed. Lax’s work in and of itself did not receive much recognition within his lifetime--with the exception of the poem Circus of the Sun, a reflection on creation from the metaphorical viewpoint of his circus experience. Late in his life, Lax began writing aphorisms, one of which I came across twice in my wanderings. Michael N. McGregor, author of the biography, Pure Act: The Uncommon Life of Robert Lax, writes that Lax “sent an aphorism to his friend the artist Nancy Goldring that beautifully summarized how [Lax] had come to see his—and maybe everyone’s—task in life: ‘not so much finding a path in the woods as finding a rhythm to walk in’.”[2] This is indeed food for thought as we each meditate on Whose we are and who we are becoming as Beloved. I think this vital wisdom plays a critical role for us as theological educators and, perhaps even more so, as online theological educators. Many students come to us seeking what they need to know to spread the Gospel and asking what’s the path of Truth. Yet that is not ours to give. What is important is to help students find a rhythm to walk in so that within their journey they can contribute of themselves to building the Reign of God. It is not so much finding a path . . . as finding a rhythm to walk in. At a very practical—incarnational—level, I imagine many can relate to the need and importance of understanding expectations in much of what we do and to which we belong: jobs, sports, church, and family. Having that understanding provides the parameters of our being in those particular ecologies and relationships. However these expectations, while sometimes made explicit, are often communicated in subtle ways: the raising of an eyebrow from a colleague or a side glance at the end of a meeting from a supervisor, or an unscheduled conversation between parent and child in the kitchen over ice cream during the late hours. Without these face-to-face cues and moment-to-moment interactions—such as when we are in online learning environments—setting expectations and developing a rhythm of being is of utmost importance. As a neophyte of online pedagogy what I find most helpful to students, in addition to setting global course and assignment expectations, is to clearly delineate a way of being as community, i.e., to develop an ecology of being or a rhythm to walk in together. By this I mean, setting expectations for their relationships as learning colleagues. To do this, I frame our week in prayer, provide a weekly study guide and adhere to regular time frames. The importance of weekly communal prayer is discussed at length in an earlier blog: https://www.wabashcenter.wabash.edu/2018/09/needling-students-to-authenticity/. Suffice it to say, prayer helps us—myself included—to “hold the tensions [we experience in the learning environment] as we deepen into greater self-awareness supporting one another in mutual learning and growth.” The weekly study guide provides a map for the week’s hopes and learning activities. It includes the weekly learning objectives and delineates step-by-step what needs to be accomplished with prompts such as: view the prayer video, view the introduction video, read X, Y and Z, attend to these questions as you read, online discussion instructions, and begin your research. Yes, I do have the module set up with each piece in logical progression, yet my experience is that students find the study guide itself supportive for learning. It provides a sense of security and helps students find their own rhythm of study within that structure. Finally, adhering to regular time frames is imperative. Regular time frames include the times for opening of a module, for online discussions, and for professor feedback. Our weeks of study run from Sunday at 7:00 pm (Central) to the following Saturday at 11:59 pm. Modules for the upcoming week’s materials open each Saturday at noon. This promotes focus on the week’s topic at hand and allows for students to plan their rhythm of study for the next week before it officially begins. Online discussions usually take two forms—for example, leader/summary or original/final word—and follow regular posting times such as: the leader posts by Wednesday, 11:59 pm; discussion occurs until Saturday at noon; and the summary post is due Saturday, 11:59 pm. Content and length expectations of the various posts are described in the weekly study guide. Expectations are important, and perhaps even more so are the feedback received by the student on her work. Critical feedback from the professor within two weeks provides students the opportunity to adjust their rhythms; perhaps they need to take more time reading, integrating, ferreting out important distinctions, or engaging their peers in substantive ways. Growth can occur and energies adjusted if students are provided regular and timely feedback. It is not so much finding a path . . . as finding a rhythm to walk in. Guiding students to operate from a regular rhythm in the online environment provides the support students need to develop their own rhythm of study. Guiding students to walk in a regular rhythm provides students the freedom to be; to engage ideas and one another—which is where their focus needs to be.  Guiding our students into a rhythm will not necessarily help them find the path of Truth, but perhaps to discover their own rhythm as they wander on this planet and create a path by which they live more deeply into the Truth. [1] Michael N. McGregor, Pure Act: The Uncommon Life of Robert Lax (New York: Fordham Press, 2015): 378. [2] McGregor, Pure Act, 381.

“Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore.” So many of our students have a “Dorothy” experience when they enter theological and religious education. Our classrooms are not what they have had previous experience of. Our classrooms are not the local church, not Bible college, not the family reunion, not church camp, not church conference, not undergraduate school, not job site; not anything like they have ever had to traverse. The location of our adult classrooms, for many students, is unique. And, once the degree is received, it will be a space to which they never return. Our classrooms, for so many, are the most foreign space they have ever ventured into. So many students are out of their comfort zones. They are away from home. While our teaching goals are rarely to comfort our students, teaching students who are upset, distressed, and skittish does not make for good teaching or good learning. Like many schools, we have a growing number of commuter students. My school draws from the boroughs of New York City, Jersey City, and Newark. While those of us who are familiar with living in the suburbs do not think of it as a “dangerous” space, those brothers and sisters who call the city home can find thick forests and dimly lit walking trails to be a problem. One night after class I was walking home. Home was on the other side of campus. Between the building where I taught and home was the baseball field, then an expanse of unlit trails through the campus arboretum. I had walked this route at night for many years with no fear or trepidation. After class, I passed a student getting into his car. Edgar (not his real name) was headed back to the City. We quickly exchanged after-class-pleasantries, then I resumed my walk toward the woods. Edgar called out to me in a concerned tone, “Doc, where you headed?!” I turned around and told him I was headed home and said, “Good night.” Edgar got in his car, raced around the parking lot until he caught up to me. He rolled down his car window and in a distressed tone called me to his car. I walked over–not sure what was wrong. He asked if I was going to walk through the woods–in the dark, alone. I said yes. He asked, “Please let me drive you home.” Feeling Edgar’s concern for me, I got in the car. During our five-minute drive, he expressed his anxiety for being in “the country.” I told him I had lived here for many years and felt comfortable walking, even in the dark, in spaces I had come to know. He told me that if I needed a ride home after class for the rest of the semester that he would gladly drive me home. Before this experience, I had considered that students might be uncomfortable with new ideas or new people or new values presented in our classrooms. I had not previously considered that students might be uncomfortable with being “in the country”–away from the city–uncomfortable in the terrain where they did not know the rules and the pathways were, literally, unlit. Suppose an obstacle to good teaching is the literal space we occupy? What if we have city people who have ventured to the country, or country people who have ventured to the city, and are fearful of this unfamiliar space? In either regard we have students who are distracted by their uncertain safety, worried if they will get back home safely and without incident. What does it mean to teach with this kind of discomfort in the room? Dorothy, of The Wizard of Oz, turned her situation into a quest. She constructed a journey which eventuated in her return home. So many of our students are not on a quest; they simply want to get a degree and the degree-giving-place is located in a place that is very foreign, a long way from home, but commutable. They commute to the foreign place and then return home each week. I suspect some students resign themselves to being uncomfortable for the duration of their education. Complicating the discomfort and anxieties of our students, another dimension to their discomfort is the experience of possibility. Author bell hooks said, “The classroom remains the most radical space of possibility in the academy.” So many students resist encounters with “radical spaces of possibility” preferring instead spaces which are reliable and previously known. My first teaching challenge was at age thirteen when I taught elementary-aged children in my church’s summer day camp. Snack time was a favorite moment in the day’s schedule. The teachers would gather all the children in one room and provide fruit as a snack. Ralph, age 10, never ate his fruit snack. He would complain and ask for cookies or chips. One day I sat with Ralph who was pouting. I asked, in earnest, why he would not eat the fruit. He said, “Because you don’t know what you’re going to get.” I told him that I did not understand. Ralph said, “If you eat an orange you don’t know if it’s gonna be sweet or sour. It might be juicy or it might be nasty. But if you eat an Oreo – they all taste the same. You know what you’re gonna get.” Many of our students find our classrooms too risky with possibility. They simply want to know, like Ralph, that they are going to get what they previously know, what they previously experience as dependable. When we say learning will be discovery, newness, encounter with the unfamiliar, even transformative–the Ralphs in our classrooms recoil. They do not want to be transformed. Some of the resistance and anxiety is that lots of people do not have an adventuresome spirit. Or more to the point, students will say that in their busyness they do not have time for an adventure. The thought of new ideas is worrisome, even burdensome, rather than motivational or inspirational. Students’ discomfort about risking the randomness of learning is anxiety producing and can make our classrooms woeful. The spring semester is upon us and my syllabus is prepared. Even so, I do not have strategies to relieve the many real discomforts, anxieties, and fears of my students. Edgars and Ralphs will likely be in my course as well as a few new kinds of fears I have yet to catalogue.  By now I have enough experience to know that much learning can happen even when fears, uncertainties, and reservations are not calmed or eased.  Beyond that, I know I need to be a non-anxious presence for the sake of all of my students and me.

I distinctly remember what my husband said when he found me typing an email to a student in the middle of the night, the glow of my laptop illuminating my face in the darkness: “You need to set better boundaries.” Suffering from insomnia–whether it was in the late stages of pregnancy or the first year of night feedings, I can’t remember–I rationalized my behavior by saying that I was being productive since I was up already, and that the student seemed genuinely distraught by the state of their paper in light of a pressing deadline. In fact, his words resonated profoundly with my own sense of being out of balance. Online teaching can blur the boundaries between our work and our lives. People readily remark that online courses take a long time to design and develop, but less time to administer. In other words, they are more front loaded than face-to-face courses. However, communication and interaction with students over email, Skype or Zoom, or even face-to-face can also place considerable demands on our time during the course of the semester. Because we can virtually correspond anytime and anyplace, it is easy to find oneself replying to students during times that one would not even entertain the possibility of a face-to-face meeting. An added pressure is that online students consider prompt responses and feedback from their instructor crucial and an indication that they care. On their evaluations students report greater satisfaction when they receive prompt replies to their emails. Yet we do a disservice when we reply as soon as we see their email, regardless of the time of day. Although this might create a greater sense of satisfaction on the part of our students, it fuels the idea that instructors are constantly “on call” and undermines their own capacity to delay gratification, which is a crucial skill for self-regulated learning. Moreover, when they see that we have emailed in the middle of the night, they may conclude that it’s all right to prioritize other things over sleep, rest, and wellbeing. We lose the opportunity to model to our students a more balanced, mindful approach to our communication and interaction. Mindfulness encourages us to cultivate an embodied presence, receptivity, and awareness of ourselves and our surroundings, so that instead of immediately reacting to what we experience, we can instead create space for a more thoughtful response. We may overlook our bodies as we interface with digital devices and screens, but as Linda Stone has observed through the phenomena of “email apnea” – the temporary absence or suspension of breathing, or shallow breathing, when doing email (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/just-breathe-building-the_n_85651) –our online interactions have physical, emotional, and cognitive ramifications. By immediately replying to students’ emails, I was failing to address my own sleep habits, and I was not giving the space for students to try to resolve their problems by themselves. In the case of students who had clearly procrastinated and emailed me an hour or two before a deadline, one could even argue that I was encouraging bad habits. Aiming for a quick turnaround, I was being reactive rather than responsive. A more mindful approach would have aligned my online communication with the expectations laid out in my syllabus, where I explain that email is my preferred method of contact, and that they should expect a reply within 24 hours. Those parameters allow for balance: one can establish hours to be offline. Admittedly, we may still find the need to accommodate students even when it impinges on our personal lives. Once I found myself emailing back and forth with a student, trying to clarify the expectations of the final project, when he suddenly asked, “Can we talk over the phone?” Although I was at my parents’ house, I felt bad and agreed to call. Bracing myself for the potential of a half-hour interruption, I dialed his phone number. After responding to various questions I hung up and looked at my phone. It had taken less than ten minutes. This made me realize that we should take advantage of multiple channels of communication with our students. In another case, a student asked if we could meet face-to-face to discuss his ePortfolio for the course. We sat together looking at his laptop, and he scrolled through some of the ePortfolio pages to ask about my comments and suggestions. Again, within a very short span of time, I was able to address all of his concerns . . . and meet the student in person. These kinds of interactions with students–over the phone, via Zoom or Skype, or in person–not only show that we care about our students, but they contribute to a greater sense of embodied presence. Although I still have a long way to go, I have found myself trying to be a more mindful online teacher, for the sake of both myself and my students.

In theological education, students who go to school online are frequently students who remain at home throughout their degree programs serving in faith communities they know well. This reality affects their formation and affects how teachers approach it. There are some advantages to the situation. As Elaine Ramshaw writes about teaching pastoral care online: “The fact that many of the students are also concurrently doing what one might call ‘embedded’ parish work, and that some of them are the pastoral leaders of their congregations, can be a plus for teaching in any of the practical fields.”[i] For example, in a class on pastoral leadership I might teach students how to lead decision-making via consensus process. An assignment option for that class might then be to lead their church board through consensus process. Assignments carried out in students’ ministry contexts represent what in higher education are called “authentic assessments.” Defined as real-world activities mirroring the very sorts of tasks students will practice in the professions for which they are preparing, authentic assessments are widely valued for their role in formation. They are also sometimes perceived to be tricky to create. But when online students can simply turn a camera on in the place they already work, authentic assessment becomes easier. I have learned several ways to take advantage of the video camera in assessing ministerial formation. The first thing I tell students is that because it is their development I care about, I will be watching and listening to them, not their congregants. They should train the camera on themselves and not worry about capturing everybody on film. They will upload the video to a secure channel, I will be the only one viewing it, and they can delete it once I have done so. Moreover, I tell them, I’m not assessing their congregants. Activities do not have to go perfectly for me to get a sense of students’ leadership abilities. Whether or not, for example, their board actually reaches consensus on a decision is not the point. These reminders help students help their folks to relax, act naturally, and forget about the camera. The hope is that I will, in fact, see a truly authentic ministry event. It appears to work. The video camera becomes quite literally like a fly on a wall that ceases to be noticed after a while. Therefore, filming has certain advantages over direct personal observation of students, which in face-to-face education is often considered the ideal way to assess student formation. The second thing I tell students is that they must watch their videos. I was surprised when I first started teaching online to discover how often they did not. I appreciate the self-consciousness and even pain associated with seeing a tape of oneself, but one of the best ways to learn how to be a minister is to watch oneself in the act of ministering. Videotaping uniquely allows for this kind of learning. The third thing I tell my students is that by watching a video of them in action, I will learn more about their context and gain appreciation for the challenges they face. The videos give me access, after all, not only to students whom I would never see otherwise because of distance, but also to real conversations being held in real church parlors, basements, and Sunday School rooms. It doesn’t get more ‘authentic’ than watching a bunch of folks sitting around a table sipping Diet Cokes, quieting fussy babies, and occasionally digressing from the exercise at hand to rehash last night’s big game. Watching the videos makes me realize how difficult the skills I’ve taught in class can be when practiced authentically. I cannot help but see what goes on. I see all the distractions and interruptions that come with trying to get church folk to have a serious conversation. I’ve watched my students struggle to manage dominant personalities, deflect obvious attempts at alternative agendas, and finish exercises in time to get to the second service. I have even watched somebody suffer a stroke in the middle of a meeting. A final advantage of authentic assessment via videotape is that teachers come to appreciate the true breadth and complexity of ministerial formation. [i] Elaine Ramshaw, “Reflections on Teaching Pastoral Care Online,” Reflective Practice: Formation and Supervision in Ministry, Volume 31 (2011), 62. This entire volume of Reflective Practice is dedicated to formation and supervision in a digital age.

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.