Resources

The author recounts his experience, as a young observant Jew, of James Kugel's academic biblical studies course at Harvard. The piece focuses specifically on how Kugel reconciles his religious faith  with his academic understanding, and how Jewish biblical scholars disagree with one another on what is involved in such a reconciliation. May be of special value for Christian learners undergoing a similar disruption, located as it is "safely" in a non-Christian context.

Alluding to several then-recent episodes of professors being forced from posts at evangelical institutions of learning, Enns asks whether schools dedicated to defending propositions grounded in private revelation and confessional dogma can be "truly academic" (and truly just to their instructors and students).

In this Prezi (without voice-over), Thompson explains "open access" to educators and scholars. Includes attention to Open Educational Resources (OER), the relation of Creative Commons to "public domain" and traditional copyright, the difference between "open access" and "open source," different axes of "openness," and the economic crisis in academic publishing. Includes link to Google Doc capturing all URLs cited in the Prezi.

A useful 2016 teaching piece for students of faith adjusting to academic religious studies. In this blog post, Tabor addresses the objection, often raised by students or religious laypeople, that (biblical) historians "exclude the miraculous" in their investigations. Not "suppressing" claims of the supernatural (e.g., miracles), historians welcome all such claims as contributing to our understanding of times and events, but refrain from adjudicating such claims beyond what is accessible to historical means.

In this excerpt from Kugel's controversial "How to Read the Bible," the author argues—with rich citation and documentation—that academic biblical studies is rife with an "unmistakably apologetic tone" of which even its most self-avowedly "critical" practitioners are largely unaware. The implication is that academic biblical studies, practiced as it is overwhelmingly by people of faith, does not achieve the honesty about the texts' "strangeness" characteristic of other corpus-oriented disciplines. (2014)

In an attempt to build a better "intensive course," Torma "does the math" on credit hours, student-directed learning, and instructor-directed learning. This piece provides a helpful framework for anyone working through "seat hour" issues regarding fully online courses, blended/hybrid courses, face-to-face "intensives," or other game-changing learning contexts.

This piece describes the peculiar origins of the "credit hour" and argues against its relevance as a measure of learning. In an outcome-based approach to curriculum design, "where and how" learners spend their time is less important than what they can learn and do.

Based on "preliminary findings of an ongoing study at Boise State University," the author reports that faculty work 61 hours/week, increasingly at administrative tasks, and "largely alone." Only a vanishingly small percentage of time is spent on research and writing. The article is especially relevant in contrast with periodic pieces purporting to show that instructors in higher ed are protected from economic realities and underworked.

Nel examines the factors contributing to overwork on the part of faculty members in higher education: habit, economics, a culture of busy-ness, the blurred line between work and "fun," technological connectedness, etc.

In this Chronicle of Higher Education (ProfHacker) piece, the author describes the discoveries arising from "Center for Teaching Excellence" workshop: specifically, regarding active learning (even with lectures), possibilities for in-class use of social media, Twitter as a means of extending collaborative learning beyond session hours, and issues of vocational training and assessment.