The key to success in online education is the creation and sustenance of a safe and vibrant virtual community. In order to create such a community instructors must pay special attention to the relationship between technology and pedagogy, specifically in terms of issues such as course design, social presence, facilitation of sustained engagement with course material, specially tailored assignments, and learner expectations and objectives. Several strategies for accomplishing this goal are presented here based on the author's experiences teaching secondcareer students in hybrid introductory theology courses at a mainline denominational seminary.
The “Make Your Own Religion” class project was designed to address a perceived need to introduce more theoretical thinking about religion into a typical religion survey course, and to do so in such a way that students would experience the wonder of theoretical discovery, and through or because of that discovery hopefully both better retain knowledge gained from the project and nurture within themselves the practice of thinking more analytically about religion (and other social and cultural things). Despite a number of challenges and unresolved questions associated with the project, it has proven relatively successful at introducing and provoking theoretical thinking about religion in a compressed period of time, without taking an inordinate number of class periods away from the survey itself. A brief description and analysis of the assignment is followed by four short responses
Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history." Plato, Ion "Poetry, therefore, is a more philosophical and a higher thing than history; for poetry tends to express the universal, history the particular." Aristotle, The PoeticsWilhelm Bousset (1865 -1920) 1 is perhaps best remembered as a New Testament scholar in the religionsgeschichtliche Schule, particularly for his seminal work on early Christology, Kyrios Christos, first published in 1913. 2 Appraisals of Bousset's work in English typically limit their view to this work, paying little or no attention to the theological presuppositions and development of his thought. Those scholars who do review Bousset's work with an eye toward his theological interests tend to paint him broadly as a classic liberal whose interests in the historical Jesus of Nazareth are best understood as a misguided attempt to provide a firm and secure foundation for faith by means of historical-critical research. 3 However, a longer view of Bousset's work over the course of his career suggests that his approach to history, particularly with respect to the possibility of securing faith's foundation in the historical Jesus, underwent significant development and can be divided into two periods: the early period of his work on Jesus, in which he remains more or less faithful to the classic liberal approach to the historical Jesus, and the * I would like to thank Dirk von der Horst of Claremont Graduate University and Drs.
The context: This is the final paper assignment in my first-year seminar, "Faith, Doubt, and Reason," but its relevance and effectiveness can extend far beyond this specific context to include both traditional and online courses of any level.
The pedagogical purpose:The purposes of this assignment are to afford a deeper and more holistic perspective on the course themes and to foster creative and critical engagement with concepts that are often poorly understood.
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