Literature
Applications of the Internet for
Christian Education Literature
Applications of the Internet for
Christian Education103 Q. What does God require in the fourth commandment?
A. First, that the ministry of the gospel and the schools be maintained . . .
So begins question and answer 103 of the Heidelberg Catechism. According to this well-known Protestant Catechism from the sixteenth century, the fourth commandment, "Remember the Sabbath Day, to keep it holy," is a command to maintain the ministry of the gospel and also the ministry of the Christian schools.
Christian schools? "But I thought that the fourth commandment said that we are supposed to rest and go to church. I don’t remember anything being said about the schools!"
True, the fourth commandment does not say anything explicitly about Christian schools. But one of the main purposes of the Christian Sabbath is the proclamation of God’s Word. Christian worship, from the very beginning, followed the Jewish custom of including preaching based upon the Holy Scriptures.
We know that Jewish synagogue worship in Jesus’ day included the preaching of God’s Word. It is recorded in Luke 4:16-30 that Jesus followed the ancient Jewish custom of preaching in synagogue worship. Luke likewise recorded Paul the Apostle’s practice of using this Jewish custom of including sermons in synagogue worship to proclaim Christ to the Jews (Acts 17:2-3). The Christian church, from the very beginning, continued this practice. Paul instructed that in every church, certain men should be ordained who would be "able to teach" (1 Timothy 3:2).
The existence of Christian schools, especially the theological schools, is therefore absolutely necessary to the proper observance of the Christian Sabbath. Take away the Christian schools, and in one generation it will become impossible to hear God’s Word preached completely and accurately.
"Granted, the theological seminaries should be supported. But does the fourth commandment also mean that we must support other schools, such as grade schools and colleges?"
Yes. Back in the sixteenth century, when the Heidelberg Catechism was written, there were those who said that Christians had no obligation to support any schools other than the theological schools. Zacharias Ursinus, one of the authors of Heidelberg Catechism, refuted this idea. He wrote in his commentary on the Catechism that part of a Christian’s obedience to the fourth commandment is the support of schools of the arts and sciences for all ages. "The maintenance of schools may be embraced under this part of the honor which is due to the ministry; for unless the arts and sciences be taught, men can neither become properly qualified to teach, nor can the purity of doctrine be preserved and defended against the assaults of heretics."
A strong system of Christian schools for all ages is therefore necessary to maintain and continue the supply of gospel ministers. Take away the Christian schools, and it will become impossible to maintain the gospel ministry. Given the importance of Christian schools, are there any ways that the Internet can aid instruction? Absolutely.
In order to find specific ways that the Internet can aid Christian instruction, let us first look at ways that various types of schools are using the Internet today.
Schools are currently using the Internet in four ways. Some are using the Internet to enhance traditional on-campus classroom instruction. These schools are (deliberately or not) continuing the use of traditional classroom teaching methods. Other schools are using the Internet as a tool to facilitate non-traditional on-campus instruction. Still others are using the Internet as a tool for traditional types of distance learning (that is, allowing students far removed from campus to receive instruction). Yet other schools are using the Internet to completely abolish traditional on-campus classroom instruction.
| Traditional Distance Learning |
Non-Traditional Distance Learning |
| Traditional On-Campus Learning |
Non-Traditional On-Campus Learning |
It is very easy to catch glimpses of how some schools use the Internet to enhance traditional on-campus classroom instruction. All it takes is a stroll through the campus library of one of these schools. Schools using the Internet to enhance traditional on-campus classroom instruction often use the Internet to improve their libraries, but little else. If one were to visit the campus library of one of these schools, one would see a collection of personal computers connected to the Internet. Students use these computers placed in the library (and perhaps elsewhere) to access the World Wide Web and to use electronic mail. In these schools, the Internet is little more than a research tool.
All Christian schools can benefit greatly from even this type of limited use of the Internet. By providing personal computers connected to the Internet, that library could increase its collection of available books and periodicals at very little cost. Entire libraries of scholarly publications are already available on the World Wide Web at no cost. Even the digitized images of the pages of artistically hand-lettered and illustrated medieval books are available for viewing on the Web.
Other applications of this traditional on-campus use of the Internet are also possible. Some university professors have taken the class handouts that they used to have printed and have posted them on World Wide Web sites containing all the reading material one needs for that course. One professor who taught art history was quoted as particularly liking this aspect of the Internet. He created a Web site that contained all the reading material that his students needed for his course. This Web site included color images of famous paintings. By posting the images of these paintings on the Web, this professor not only saved an immense quantity of paper but also removed the need for his students to each spend hundreds of dollars purchasing books with color reproductions of paintings of the masters. In a similar manner, another professor has posted color images of ancient Bible scrolls for his students.
The Internet has already done much to facilitate traditional on-campus learning. It has also done much to aid non-traditional on-campus learning.
One school that has done much to make use of the Internet in non-traditional ways for on-campus instruction is the University of Pennsylvania (or "Penn"). Professor James J. O’Donnell, a professor of classics at Penn, has been one of the leaders in finding ways to use the Internet to facilitate non-traditional on-campus instruction. According to Professor O’Donnell, "I am convinced that I have blundered into the future and started to live some of the science fiction I used to consume voraciously when I should have been memorizing Greek verb forms."
In January of 1994, Professor O’Donnell was preparing to teach an advanced undergraduate course he taught many times before on the thought of St. Augustine. Since typically only about ten students enrolled for this course in any one semester, he wanted to find ways to expand the number of participants in order to enrich the educational experience of those enrolled. Consequently, he decided to create an e-mail mailing list to accompany his course and invited anyone and everyone, both on- and off-campus, to join the discussion. "I noticed that I regularly spent hours and hours a day in dialogue with dozens of people in other kinds of places in the world, using the technology. And the insight . . . was if I could bring together some of those people far, far away with the ten students in the classroom, the interaction would be mutually beneficial for all participants."
Professor O’Donnell announced the creation of this mailing list on other e-mail lists, and ended up with over 550 subscribers from around the world. Many of these subscribers were students at other universities. The discussion group also included respected scholars in church history and other fields, as well as various types of Internet "surfers."
The students enrolled in the course met for two and one half hours every Monday afternoon. One student was appointed secretary and would write a summary of the class discussion, which was posted on the e-mail list before midnight. Any special handouts, as well as transcripts of lectures by visiting professors and two papers by students responding to those lectures, were also posted to the list.
Vigorous discussion ensued by e-mail the remainder of each week. Professor O’Donnell admitted initial misgivings: "I was concerned at the outset that, especially with a topic as potentially controversial as Augustine, the list might get out of control." The discussion, however, "remained civil and stayed as close to topic as any reasonable classroom seminar would."
Professor O’Donnell noted that the diversity of participants on the e-mail list made for a much richer course than he could have ever taught by himself. For example, he cited the time that one of the list’s correspondents in Istanbul reported on a lecture given there by a Franciscan priest on medieval Christian philosophy to the faculty of an Islamic university there, and the resulting reaction. This one report gave his students valuable insights into Islamic reaction to Christian thinking.
Professor O’Donnell was so encouraged by the success of this educational experiment that he expanded the use of these techniques to his other courses. "What I would emphasize most strongly is that adding this networked community to the discussion has sharply increased the quality of the course for students here at Penn."
He found that these new techniques are simple, inexpensive, and effective. "There is nothing that I describe doing here that a faculty member with the right (essentially simple) piece of equipment on her desktop could not learn to do within about an hour all told. The use of networked technology is in fact the cheapest, easiest, and most powerful enhancement to teaching that I can see within my reach, and it will only get easier and more powerful as the years go by. I cannot imagine ever passing a semester in the classroom again without the umbilical cord to the network to energize, diversify, and deepen what we do."
Readers interested in learning more about Professor O’Donnell’s experiences in using the Internet to facilitate on-campus instruction may want to check his Web page at http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod.
Penn’s English Department has followed and expanded the applications of the Internet that Professor O’Donnell pioneered. E-mail lists and newsgroups now handle much of the non-class communication between professors and students that before had to be limited to scheduled office hours. Teaching assistants now provide students assistance the night before examinations by hosting live e-mail chats. Class handouts have been phased out in favor of World Wide Web sites that not only contain the material previously found in handouts, but also audio recordings and graphics.
The Web page for Penn’s English 88 course, a course in poetry, illustrates how the World Wide Web can facilitate classroom instruction. It is at http://www.english.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/home.html.
Because of the success of these new teaching techniques in Penn’s English courses, Penn’s English Department announced in 1995 that it was redesigning Penn’s undergraduate English program to integrate this new technology into all its courses.
Up to now, we have been seeing how the Internet facilitates non-traditional on-campus instruction at the university level. But what about grade schools? The Internet has been successfully used there as well.
Some high schools have started using e-mail discussion groups to aid instruction in their classes. One high school teacher in Florida has reported that after setting up an e-mail mailing list for one of his courses he had 500 messages on a particular list, with no fewer than 132 of them from a single student who never spoke up in class. This student, uncomfortable with speaking in class, had little problem in participating in e-mail discussions. E-mail discussions also allow grade school students to participate in "virtual field trips" that allow them to interact with farmers, pastors, politicians, and other groups. And the World Wide Web permits grade school students to gather newer information for writing assignments than is available in any encyclopedia.
Distance learning – that is, instruction given to students who are located at some distance from their instructors – has been commonplace since the advent of television. It is not unusual for students to view lectures by means of closed circuit television from an instructor located hundreds of miles away.
However, distance learning is not new a new technique. Paul and several other apostles employed a form of distance learning when they wrote their letters to the early churches. Letters, which prior to the Apostolic age were little more than business tools, were now the means by which Christ’s disciples were instructed and guided from great distances.
We have recently seen the importance of Christian education and how the Internet is being used to aid classroom instruction. Now, we hope to see how the Internet is being used to aid traditional and non-traditional distance learning.
Traditional distance learning, like traditional on-campus learning, generally makes use of classrooms. The one exception is when distance learning techniques are used for tutoring. Tutoring by distance learning has been used, for example, in Australia. There, teachers have often tutored grade school children living hundreds of miles away in remote areas by means of two-way short-wave radio.
The only difference between traditional on-campus learning and traditional distance learning is the location of the instructor. In traditional on-campus learning, the instructor is in the same classroom as the students. In traditional distance learning, the instructor is not in the same classroom as the students, but typically lectures them – and perhaps takes questions – over closed circuit television.
Traditional distance learning has become a widely used technique. In 1997, more than 140 educational institutions in the United States and more than 80 in Canada offered distance learning courses using television. Since the television signal for each course is transmitted over satellites or closed circuits, the students usually cannot view the lectures in their homes. The television signals for each course are normally sent to classrooms in communities located at some distance from the instructor.
Since these television signals are sent to groups of students gathered in classrooms, these classrooms are often located within the facilities of other schools that allow the distance learning school the use of their facilities. For example, adults enrolled in university distance learning programs might gather to view televised lectures in a high school facility. Because distance learning students often meet for class in school buildings, these students often have access to the libraries and other facilities of the school whose facilities they are using.
How is the Internet used in traditional distance learning? Much the same as in traditional on-campus learning. In both cases, the Internet is used largely as a research tool, supplementing the library.
The most innovative educational applications of the Internet occur when it is used to aid non-traditional distance learning. Non-traditional distance learning attempts to use the Internet to its full potential to increase the effectiveness and to reduce the costs of instruction.
The Open University of Catalonia, based in Barcelona, Spain, has probably done more than any other school to utilize the full power of the Internet in non-traditional distance learning. The Open University of Catalonia is a "virtual" university – in that it completely lacks any campus. It has the distinction of being the first educational institution built entirely around communications technology. All instruction is carried out without classrooms over the Internet.
The Catalan government created the Open University of Catalonia in 1994. Only twelve months after it was created, it enrolled its first 200 students. By the year 2000, enrollment was expected to reach 11,000. Its first year, it offered courses of study in business and educational psychology. Additional degree programs in law, engineering, English, Catalan, and statistics were planned.
Students at the Open University of Catalonia rely on personal computers, modems, and telephone lines for instruction. Students still use printed textbooks, which are delivered via regular mail. All students, however, turn in assignments, participate in class discussions and communicate with their instructors by means of electronic mail.
Most students at the Open University hold full time jobs, so the Internet-based instruction gives the students the scheduling flexibility they need. Students often receive all their instruction in their homes. But even though the students seldom see each other face-to-face, the University has made efforts to reduce feelings of isolation. Face-to-face study meetings are held twice every semester. A virtual library and a virtual cafeteria are also available.
Despite the use of standard printed textbooks, the Open University staff is busy developing new multimedia course materials. Multimedia materials combine text, graphics and sound to be displayed and heard on a computer. These multimedia materials are to be delivered over the Internet and may eventually replace the printed textbooks.
Those interested in learning more about the Open University of Catalonia should visit its Web site at http://www.uoc.es. (Be warned, however, that most documents on this Web site are written in Spanish.)
We have seen above ways that schools for all ages are using the Internet. The question is, how can Christian schools make use of the Internet?
In many ways, Christian schools can benefit from the Internet in same ways as schools that are not specifically Christian. They can use it to add to their library resources. They can supplement or replace printed textbooks and handouts with World Wide Web sites for each course. They can use it to help students communicate with their instructors. And they can use it to aid discussion, both amongst the students themselves and with those outside the school community.
These are all ways that the Internet can aid Christian education. But Christian schools have their own special needs. Christian schools seek to teach students to view everything in light of the self-attesting Christ of Scripture. Christian schools seek to prepare students to serve their entire lives in terms of Christ’s Great Commission. Christian schools often have tight budgets since they frequently operate without state or corporate funding. And Christian schools often must seek to operate in the shadow of hostile governments.
First, Christian schools seek to teach students to view everything in light of the self-attesting Christ of Scripture. As the late Professor Cornelius Van Til of Westminster Seminary pointed out, we cannot truly know anything unless we see all things as created by God. It is impossible to have true knowledge of even something as ordinary as a mouse unless we see that mouse as created by God and part of God’s predestinating plan.
The problem with attempting to teach in this manner is that the selection of available textbooks and other educational materials is limited. Most textbooks have been written for non-Christian schools. Such textbooks do not teach that everything was created by the sovereign predestinating God for His glory. And the selection of those textbooks that do give the triune God His rightful place is limited. The World Wide Web makes it faster and easier to publish and distribute Christian educational material. And because computers are getting better at translating texts from one language into another, this is a low-cost way of providing Christian educational materials in many languages.
In the same way, the Internet also increases the supply of available Christian reference material. Many of the classics of Christian theology and philosophy are available on the Web. These are works that, until now, were only available to those with large book purchasing budgets or to those with access to a large library. With Internet access, any Christian school now can have access to a large selection of Christian literature.
Second, Christian schools seek to prepare students to serve their entire lives in terms of Christ’s Great Commission. The Great Commission tells us that it is our job to make disciples of all nations. The Great Commission should thus focus our attention on those around us. The Internet not only allows us to teach the nations directly, it also allows us to view the world around us. As a result, students and teachers can be kept aware of the world’s needs and can craft strategies for fulfilling the Great Commission.
One of the problems that faces churches in some nations is providing the necessary training for prospective ministers. It is not uncommon for those seeking training for the pastoral ministry to have to leave their homeland for several years for their education. We have seen above how the University of Pennsylvania and the Open University of Catalonia are using the Internet for instruction in innovative ways. These new learning techniques, that are easy to apply to distance learning, provide a way that seminary instructors can teach prospective pastors in other lands.
The techniques that these universities have used also solve the time zone problem. A major past difficulty with distance learning has been that sometimes the instructor and students were in different time zones. The techniques that these universities have used permit everyone involved to listen to lectures, ask questions, and participate in discussions while living in different time zones.
Third, Christian schools often have tight budgets since they frequently must operate without state or corporate funding. Out of economic necessity, Christian schools must use their available funds in highly efficient ways.
The Internet provides many ways to reduce the cost of instruction. Mention has already been made of ways to distribute textbooks and other literature using the Web. The Internet also allows schools to limit or eliminate the need for classrooms. The Open University of Catalonia that was featured above is a good example.
This feature of the Internet provides the opportunity to instruct covenant children in their homes using distance learning techniques. Many Christian parents are choosing home schooling as a way of providing a Christian education for their children. In some areas, home schooling is the only way possible to provide children a Christian education. Even in areas with Christian schools, many parents still choose to teach their children at home.
Some home schooling parents, however, experience burnout after trying to teach their children themselves while trying to fulfill their other responsibilities. The use of distance learning techniques to instruct children at home is a technically feasible, yet largely untapped, application of the Internet. Lessons and assignments for children – even for those in the elementary grades – can be completed using specially designed Web sites. And videoconferencing, another application of the Internet, can allow teacher and student to talk to each other and to see each other face to face. These techniques offer the possibility of providing Christian instruction at a fraction of the cost of traditional classroom instruction, while yet allowing personal contact with an instructor.
These techniques also provide many of the features of home schooling that some parents find attractive. Because this type of instruction is carried out in the child’s home, it offers parents the opportunity to closely monitor both the content of instruction and their child’s progress.
Distance learning techniques also can reduce costs and enhance programs by allowing schools to combine resources and programs. Seminaries can combine forces to offer courses of study using professors from various schools. Grade schools can augment their programs by using distance learning to teach foreign languages and other subjects. These techniques allow each school to specialize at what each does best.
Fourth, Christian schools often must operate despite the opposition of hostile governments. This opposition does not always take the form of an outright ban. Sometimes this opposition takes the form of various, often subtle, forms of discrimination.
Despite government attempts at censorship, the Internet allows the importation of texts and other materials required by Christian schools. These materials, if necessary, can be encrypted to allow them to be transmitted across borders. E-mail also allows those associated with Christian education to quickly share ideas and concerns in order to strengthen each other despite persecution.
The ways that the Internet can assist Christian education are many and varied. There is no question that other applications of the Internet for Christian education will be discovered. Let us eagerly anticipate and be ready to apply them.
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