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

In these extraordinary times, spirituality and imagination are vital resources for teaching and the teaching life. This conversation with Willie Jennings (Yale University) and Amy Oden (Saint Paul School of Theology) will discuss spiritual formation and deformation, the role of the arts, and the use of creativity to sustain us through this time of uncertainty.

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

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

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