Teaching and Learning > DISCOURSE

Dispersed Teaching and Learning through a Foundation Degree in Theology and Ministry: Towards the Creation of a Community of Scholarship

Author: John Williams

Journal Title: Discourse

ISSN: 2040-3674

ISSN-L: 1741-4164

Volume: 10

Number: 2

Start page: 159

End page: 174

Return to vol. 10 no. 2 index page

Introduction

The context for this study is the York St John University Foundation Degree in Theology and Ministry. The FDTM was launched in 2003 and has been adopted as the validated route for the training of licensed lay ministers (and latterly also some ordained ministers) within the Church of England across the five Anglican dioceses of the Yorkshire Region (York, Ripon & Leeds, Bradford, Wakefield and Sheffield), as well as working with the Methodist Church, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Hallam and a number of other partners. The FDTM is currently taught at 11 off-site Centres as well as on site at York St John. The author of this study is now a Senior Lecturer in Theology and Ministry at York St John, but was formerly an Associate Tutor teaching on the programme at one of the off-site Centres.

The situation giving rise to the study is that over a period of several years efforts have been made to offer more support to the offsite Centres, for example by providing termly module planning sessions and annual tutor training days. The hope has been that off-site Centre Tutors would feel part of the academic community at YSJ and that YSJ and off-site staff alike would benefit from opportunities to share ideas and good practice. Although progress has been made in this direction, some off-site tutors continue to express a sense of remoteness from the University and a desire to work more closely with YSJ staff on the task of turning the basic module documentation into teaching and learning activities that will engage students effectively towards the delivery of the module and programme learning outcomes. This study is designed to address this identified need and to take its implications to a stage beyond the provision and sharing of learning materials for modules, and towards the building of a genuine sense of a dispersed community of scholarship and learning within the Programme.

During the academic year 2008-9, FDTM staff began to undertake the following steps in pursuit of these objectives:

This paper reflects on the experience to date and seeks to establish some theoretical and theological underpinning for improvements in practice, integration and mutual enrichment between YSJ staff and offsite tutors as a community of scholarship. This leads to some suggestions about practical requirements for developing the online learning community across all YSJ partners, implications for critical reappraisal of professional practice in relation to teaching and learning, and a concluding theological reflection.

Theoretical foundations

The aspiration towards a dispersed community of scholarship rests upon a constructivist foundation with an added theological dimension. In developing the constructivist perspective in educational theory, Piaget emphasised that learning is a process of discovery more than the acquisition of information (Piaget, 1973). Dewey argued that the best context in which to experience this learning by discovery is within a community of learners who are able to reflect on their experience together (Dewey, 1966). Vygotsky built further on this work in his theory of the social construction of knowledge through contextual and collaborative interaction among learners (van de Veer and Valsiner, 1994). While the FDTM seeks to model a constructivist approach in its regular on-site learning and teaching activities, in the sense that students are encouraged to build their learning through critical reflection on contextual practice in dialogue with what they experience in the face to face learning sessions, an enhanced use of the opportunities of online learning would further strengthen the model by facilitating a richer mutual engagement among students and tutors alike when not gathered on-site. This in turn could serve to reduce the assumption made by at least some students (and some tutors) that the teaching contact time during modules is the place where a more didactic method will be employed, i.e. that students come to their Centre to be resourced with 'content' by academically qualified tutors, which they are then expected somehow to 'apply' in their context.

Weller (2002) has proposed a matrix illustrating four pedagogical styles dependent on the extent to which teaching is 'high-tech' or 'lowtech' in its use of online technologies, and didactic or constructivist in its theoretical underpinning. Traditionally much teaching in HE has tended to be low-tech and didactic; Adult Education in particular has pioneered more constructivist low-tech approaches. Once a high-tech practice is embraced, this does not automatically mean that pedagogy moves from the didactic to the constructivist end of the spectrum; it remains perfectly possible to employ technologies in the service of 'information delivery', and indeed, as we shall see later, online tutoring can be vulnerable precisely to a kind of manipulation of learning with the tutor gaining a guru-like status. To aim to move on Weller's matrix into the 'high tech and constructivist' sector requires clear intention, commitment and careful planning, and where a VLE such as Blackboard is used chiefly as a repository of course information and materials, this aim is not yet achieved.

The idea of the learning community

Writing of the introduction of a VLE with students on a distance learning theology programme, Alison Le Cornu (2005) describes the process of design and delivery of a Residential School at which students were to gain their first experience of how to use the VLE. A stated goal of the School was 'to build a sense of community and to encourage higher levels of friendship through small-group work'; however, staff planning the School felt that elements of the modules to be studied should also provide the opportunity to engage with the themes of community formation, and thus a further goal was formulated, viz. 'to encourage students to reflect theologically on the meaning of body and community, using these concepts in a wide variety of ways' (Le Cornu 2005: 2). Another online programme describes the value of collaborative learning, that:

depends on both independent and interpersonal interaction in the virtual environment …involves an active process of exploring personal experience, knowledge and understanding within a shared community…fosters personal learning through peer exchange and group interaction within a mutual and supportive learning environment. ('Training for Teaching and Learning Online' available from Ushaw Online, accessed 19.11.09)

These examples draw attention to the resonances between the idea of the learning community and elements of Christian theology. Personal growth is the ultimate goal of education, and learning ultimately is measured by change in oneself; and the theological case for this is based on how God leads us towards the flowering of full personal identity in relation with others whom God is similarly leading. We learn together and from each other, whoever is in the role of teacher or learner on any given occasion. This is the insight of the Trinitarian doctrine, that Persons are realised in Relations (Zizioulas, 1993). Learning becomes a repeated process of bouncing ideas back and forth among the partners in a conversation, not as an intellectual exercise but against the backdrop of the daily commitments in which the participants are involved (in this case, as practising Christians). Parker Palmer writes that 'the truth that emerges through listening and responding to each other and the subject at hand is more likely to transcend collective opinion that to fall prey to it. With consensus, individual truth is both affirmed and corrected by the communal troth in which we live and learn' (Palmer, 1983: p.97). Palmer's use of the archaic word troth is important. As a kind of blending of trust and truth, the idea of troth points to mutual commitment, an honest and open giving and receiving in relationship, a listening and learning, that forms the context for personal and corporate growth and development. Trustfulness and truthfulness belong together somewhere at the heart of education as also of Christian discipleship. In the context of online learning, this introduces a crucial role for the tutor as the builder of authentic community.

The tutor as community builder

The online environment engages participants in a setting where the indications of personal gestures, body language, surroundings and so on are not present to distract or 'skew' communications or their interpretation. There are echoes here of the 'discourse theory' of truth propounded by the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, who posits the 'ideal speech situation' as a scenario in which truth would be attained by all participants in a discourse having freedom to place propositions on the table, so to speak, uninfluenced by prejudices, external constraints, vested interests and all forms of distortion of communication. In reality any actual situation of discourse or dialogue can only ever approximate towards this idea: hence it is indeed, in theological terms (which Habermas does not employ), something 'eschatological'. For this reason these are precisely the conditions for which Christians must strive, and the 'ideal speech situation' provides a model for educational activity within the church community. To foster undistorted communication that issues in healthy learning online requires particular skills. The online environment is peculiarly dependent on good discussion and the cultivation of behaviours that encourage rather than impede it (Wilson and Whitelock 1998).

Salmon (2003) offers a five stage process for guiding the students towards effective learning:

At each stage, she identifies a Technical Support role that decreases over time as students become more proficient with the systems, and what she calls the e-moderating role of the tutor, that correspondingly increases as the Technical Support role recedes. To begin with, induction into the use of the technological platforms is the priority, and tutors need to ensure that this takes place in a supportive, accessible and encouraging way. At the second stage, tutors need to pay attention to 'online hospitality', developing the ground rules, customs and ethos that will facilitate good mutual relationships and wholesome learning environments. At the third, emphasis shifts to the nature of the learning activities provided, especially their collaborative character; at the fourth, provision of fresh teaching and learning materials reduces as students gain the confidence to engage more and more in discussions, explorations and initiatives in which they resource and learn from one another. Finally the fifth stage is reached when learning and practice and fresh developments to enrich and advance these further are ongoing, the online participants taking responsibility themselves for the process.

In consultation with the dispersed network of Associate Tutors on the FDTM, comments were made that are illuminated by Salmon's analysis. In particular, there was evidence of confusion or frustration because of the mixing up of different stages of the community building process. There were recurrent technical problems that meant that some participants were never able successfully to negotiate Stage 1. In some cases, tutors were only involved in teaching occasional modules and as the pattern of delivery of the FDTM means that most modules come round only once every two years, these tutors would struggle with the socialisation at Stage 2. On the other hand, inexperienced tutors found they needed much support in the use of learning materials (Stage 3) even though they had little opportunity for developing and sustaining close online relationships. One tutor who had much greater personal experience of online learning felt, however, that the FDTM staff were tending to limit their input to Stage 3, giving guidance about module content and learning materials, whereas more academically resourced theological debate and discussion would have been welcomed, i.e. more operation at Stage 4. Some tutors expressed doubts about the desire of students to embrace the concept of an online learning community given the many other demands on their time and their struggle to complete the requirements of the programme, as well as in some cases their lack of IT literacy.

Practical necessities

A dispersed community of learning will be dependent from square one upon a suitable and functioning IT system with adequate technical support from personnel who understand the use to which the system is being put. University support personnel accustomed to dealing with the needs of a student and staff body present on site may not always appreciate the issues involved with a dispersed system. Additionally, however, the issue is being raised as to whether a single VLE system such as Blackboard is the best tool for facilitating what is being sought. Many other applications are available that enable a variety of different ways of interactive sharing and collaboration among students and tutors alike, such as Dropbox and Etherpad. Many students and tutors will personally use social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter, and there are programs that enable these to be incorporated into specially created learning networking sites. The tool Compendle allows a wide range of learning resources to be compiled together from different sources and then published to students who can access them through a whole range of media including social networking and mobile phone technologies.

Nevetheless, if a specific VLE like Blackboard is the chosen vehicle, it remains essential that all participants are thoroughly comfortable with using it and the tutor acting as co-ordinator or 'animateur' has a key role in ensuring this. One teaching colleague not involved in the FDTM programme found that students were not using the VLE even though many regularly used Facebook and other media in their daily lives. She concluded that much more help and support was needed, and in particular adopted a very 'flat' structure' for the layout of online content so that students did not have to locate material hidden away in a complex system of folders, sub-folders and files. Instead, the basic page for each module was turned into a compendium of immediately accessible sites comprising basic module information, up to date details of learning activities for each upcoming session, interactive tasks and options, supported open learning activities, occasional podcasts by the tutor, opportunity for students to post reviews of materials accessed themselves, links to discussion boards, DVD clips and so on. By this means by accessing the module page, students were immediately offered a lively, varied, regularly updated range of participative learning and sharing opportunities, such that most would opt into at least some of them at any given time.

The strategy adopted by the team working on the Residential School described by Le Cornu was to mount a real time practical experience of setting up a VLE learning project during an afternoon workshop, with students in groups of mixed ability in regard to IT. Students needed to use the online facility working in teams to access a range of resources from which to construct the initial proforma for a Portfolio assignment that would form the assessed work for a course module. Staff were available throughout to guide, support and facilitate where needed. Every part of the experience became material for learning, including the inevitable cases of technological failure or error leading to valuable work being lost! Evaluating the experience, Le Cornu identified the reasons for what went well:

Organization, team work which brought in all the necessary skills, good staff presence and commitment, clear explanations, and the openness and honesty towards the students which pervaded throughout…our greatest satisfaction was in seeing students being prepared to have a go, take the risk, and gain more than they or we might have anticipated (Le Cornu, 2005: 5).

All of this points up the necessity for tutors to acquire distinctive skills of facilitation alongside adequate technological knowledge to be able to support a planned programme of learning and practice to make the online community a reality (for practical guidance see Clarke, 2008; and on developing the use of the VLE, Weller, 2007).

Critical issues

The FDTM at the time of writing remains in the position of operating a dispersed delivery of programme teaching with use of the VLE very largely as a means of disseminating module information, teaching and learning materials and occasional study resources to students and tutors across the Centres. The present project has begun the process of exploring the potential to move towards a more creative and interactive use of the VLE to enhance the learning experience on the programme, both for dispersed tutors sharing and contributing expertise and ideas, and for students cultivating a greater level of interactivity and collaboration in learning. Within the parameters of the project, Centre Tutors have been consulted, some examples of other VLE-based projects have been explored, and training in online tutoring undertaken. This has been done against the backdrop of some initial engagement with literature in the field. Out of all this, the critical issues for further attention can be summarized as follows:

At this point it may seem as if the idea being explored in this paper is hedged about with too many pitfalls. This does not have to be the case, however, but it has taken up most of the time of the current project to reach the point of being clearer about what the issues are and so to be in a position potentially to formulate a better understanding of where we might go from here. A recent report concluded:

The potential to share ideas and information and to join in online conferencing can be a powerful motivator… Some products have been associated with developing higher levels of learning through enabling students to engage in online discussions and fostering selfstudy. (BECTA ICT Review of the Research Literature on the use of MLEs and VLEs in Education available at http://www.becta.org.uk)

To re-focus the vision for a community of scholarship in a more positive light, this paper concludes by reflecting theologically on the potential.

Theological reflection

The FDTM is a programme designed expressly for the education and formation of church ministers, lay as well as ordained. Ministerial education is characterized by an interwoven threefold pattern of (to adapt some slightly differing versions of the terminology) knowledge of the tradition, practice of skills in context, and spirituality or personal formation. The theologian Edward Farley (1983) designates these strands as Gospel, Ecclesia (or Church) and Faith; each has a characteristic style of learning that resources it, namely the academic/critical, the practical/contextual and what Farley has termed habitus, meaning the cultivation over time of a kind of indwelt wisdom that is the deposit of a lived life of faithful discipleship. In a similar way, Stanley Hauerwas (1984) has described the ultimate aim of theological education in terms of 'performativity', that those educated for Christian ministry should in their whole-life expression, not just as individuals but in community, model and give shape to authentic performance of Christian faith. The question is whether an online learning community can enrich and enhance the opportunities for accomplishing this.

One advantage of online learning is that it takes place in situ, and can therefore help to overcome the difficulty felt by many students who come to their teaching Centre to receive input, but then struggle to know what to do with it back in their church, or work-day context. The missing strand of critical and contextual reflection on practice could well be facilitated more effectively by the much more flexible and 'instant' medium of an online environment, especially with opportunity for real-time discussion with tutors and fellow students on matters arising. It is possible to see how the connectivity and collaborative spirit enabled by online means can serve to bring together the elements of ministerial theological education as Farley sees them in a more tangible way than more traditional methods of delivery that alternate between taught 'contact time' at the remote location and 'fieldwork' or placement activity in the context. Moreover, the personal formative dimension that is less well measured by traditionally academic methods of assessment could be enhanced in an exciting way by sharing through discussion forums and chat rooms rather than remaining a rather private, individualistic thing. It is this corporate, contextual, critical searching after truth that is profoundly formative. As theologian Julie Hopkins (1995: 103) has put it:

Truth is best grasped by the weaving together of diverse experience and praxis through a process of dialogue…That process is one of listening honestly and with respect to the other and then through discussion, criticism and evaluation finally reaching a temporary consensus and acting upon it until new experience requiring new criteria engenders further dialogue.

Rowan Williams (1992) gives three reasons for the necessity of an educational process in the church that insists on wrestling with difficult issues of doctrine. First, there is no intrinsic merit in 'keeping it simple' if the reality is complex. Second, it is patronising to tell someone that something is 'all they need to know' and all they need to do is just believe it. Third, doctrine can all too easily be pressed into the service of oppression, and this is far more likely to occur where it is kept in the hands of the elite few. Williams argues that true Christian learning occurs not by 'the church telling people what to think', but in attentiveness to one another (1992: 36-7):

to have a sense of this demands of us a level of patience and attention that can properly be called 'contemplative'…we recognize the reality and dignity of another, the fact that they are not abstract fictions of our own preference, in the degree that we pause to look and to hear before we impose solutions, interpretations, condemnations or whatever.

Again, it may well be that the facilities of an online environment could be exactly what is needed, when carefully handled and marshalled, to bring people together in a manner that can bring about this type of learning. Mary Hess observes (2005: 30):

I do think that traditionally we have tended in church circles, the institutional church, to look at media and IT as a visual aid...But rather than just looking at media as a delivery system, the church is more and more looking at media as the sacramentals of today...We need to break the borders of what is sacred and what is profane and bring into the catechetical forum, into theological forum these media experiences that people are reporting...this is how they are meeting the divine, how they are telling their stories...

And David Pullinger (2001: 45-6) comments that:

We are to develop technology in such a way that the blessings, riches and potential God has put in creation are allowed to flower...Second, our technological activity should reflect love for God and neighbour by expanding, not constricting, the opportunities for men and women to be the loving, joyful beings God intends them to be.

Lastly Quentin Schultze (2004) reminds Christian educators of the need to be not so much technologists as 'wise caretakers' of the educational dimension of God's world, and to use learning technologies to model wisdom, truth, compassion, justice and peace in humility in reliance upon the Holy Spirit. These are all noble aspirations and especially challenging to those who adhere to the view that in the end it is only face to face interaction that can genuinely facilitate the kind of relationality that fosters and nurtures true spiritual flourishing. But, as many today are discovering through their experience of 'second life' technologies that allow them to participate in a group through the persona of an 'avatar', for all the potential dangers that may lurk in this practice, self-disclosure and exposure to others in an environment that does not require physical presence can be liberative and facilitate genuine personal growth that might otherwise be impeded through shyness, feelings of unworthiness, poor body image and a host of other limiting factors. Theologically there can be no grounds for restricting human communication to media of physical presence (which would in any case rule out the telephone!), and many may well thrive in a learning environment that does not immediately draw attention to their personal academic shortcomings in the ways that traditional learning and teaching environments so often do. For a vocational programme like the FDTM this may be an opportunity too fruitful to pass by.

Bibliography

Clarke, A., E-Learning Skills, 2nd edn., (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).

Dewey, J., Democracy and Education, (New York: Free Press, 1996).

Farley, E., Theologia: the Fragmentation and Unity of Theological Knowledge, (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983).

Hauerwas, S., Performing the Faith: Bonhoeffer and the Practice of Non-violence, (London: SPCK, 2004).

Hess, M., Engaging Technology in Theological Education: All That We Can't Leave Behind, (Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005).

Hopkins, J., Towards a Feminist Christology, (London: SPCK, 1995).

Le Cornu, A., 'Baptism of Fire: Introducing Brookes Virtual to Theology Distance Learning Students', Brookes eJournal of Learning and Teaching, Vol. 1, no. 3, (2005) pp. 1-6.

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Piaget, J., To Understand is to Invent, (New York: Grossman, 1973).

Pullinger, D., Information Technology and Cyberspace; Extra-connected Living, (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 2001).

Salmon, G. E., Moderating: The Key to Teaching and Learning Online, (London: Kogan Page, 2003).

Schultze, Q., 'Faith, Education and Communication Technology', Journal of Education and Christian Belief, Vol. 8, no. 1, (2004) pp.9-21.

Van der Veer, R. and Valsiner, J., (eds.) The Vygotsky Reader, (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1994).

Weller, M., Delivering Learning on the Net, (London: Routledge Farmer, 2002).

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Websites

BECTA ICT Review of the Research Literature on the use of MLEs and VLEs in Education available at: http://www.becta.org.uk

Ushaw Online: http://www.ushaw.ac.uk/html/outreach/outreach_web/index.php

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