Teaching the Bible through the Internet In the Classroom and at a Distance

This essay will argue that the internet provides an “added-value” to education, providing resources for more effective teaching and enhancing the learning of the students. The internet emphasizes written communication, facilitating clarity of thought and serving as the basis for critical thinking. The internet emphasizes the social dimensions of learning, and the students’ own role in their learning. This essay will illustrate the value of the internet for teaching and learning through a case study of transforming a traditional introductory course on the Bible into a distance course. Teaching and Learning through the Internet [1] Once the internet became widely accessible, it offered the hope of inexpensive education to the masses, especially to those who are unable to benefit from a traditional university curriculum as a result of either geographic location or schedule constraints. Internet based education could be delivered (in theory) to any location on the planet, and students could work through the course material at their own convenience. Distance education initiatives have been enthusiastically put forward by university administrators and public officials, often with the intention of developing more economically efficient means of delivering education. Faculty tend to give a more cautious response, questioning, on the one hand, the long-term impact of such initiatives on the role of university professors, and on the other hand, the quality of such education. A continuing focal concern of faculty is how distance or online education can replicate the faculty’s own expert contribution to the learning process. [2] The prospect of inexpensive education over the internet is not likely to be realized at least not in the near future. Research has indicated, and experience has borne out, that distance education has unexamined costs and limits on its generation of income. In addition to the startup costs, involving both infrastructure and production of course materials, distance education courses incur the costs for technical support, which ideally should be available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. More significantly, however, the income generated by distance courses is limited by several factors. Foremost among these is the workload of the professor. Distance courses usually create much more work for the professor than traditional courses, and unlike traditional courses, the workload increases linearly for each student enrolled in the course. An online course of ten students may demand as much work from a professor as a traditional course of thirty students. As a result, some studies suggest that most distance courses should be limited to 12-20 students, depending on the level of instruction (Boettcher). A second limiting factor is that distance education is not appropriate for all students. Distance education requires students to be self-motivated and to take responsibility for their own learning. Students who do not have 1 See the discussion in Feenberg and University of Illinois Teaching at an Internet Distance Seminar, 16-19.