New Report: Online Learning Still Hot

A new report just released by the Babson Survey Research Group and The Sloan Consortium shows the number of online learners continuing to grow.

Key findings from the report, “Learning on Demand: Online Education in the United States, 2009“:

Online Students Increase by 17%

For the sixth consecutive year the number of students taking at least one online course continued to expand at a rate far in excess of the growth of overall higher education enrollments.

The most recent estimate for fall 2008 shows an increase of 17 percent over fall 2007 to a total of 4.6 million online students. The growth from 1.6 million students taking at least one online course in fall 2002 to the 4.6 million for fall 2008 represents a compound annual growth rate of 19 percent. The overall higher education student body has only grown at an annual rate of around 1.5 percent during this same period (from 16.6 million in fall 2002 to 18.2 million for fall 2008 – Projections of Education Statistics to 2018, National Center for Education Statistics).

Over one-quarter of all higher education students are now taking at least one online course. A question posed each year is “when will the growth in online reach its limit?” The current data show that this limit has not yet been reached, as double-digit growth rates continue for yet another year.

Schools with Online Offerings: 86% Say Online Comparable or Superior

Since first measured in 2003, the proportion of chief academic officers reporting that the learning outcomes for online compared to face-to-face as the ‘Same’, ‘Somewhat Superior’, and ‘Superior’ has increased from 57 percent to 68 percent.

A majority of institutions with no online offerings (58 percent) believe online to be ‘Somewhat inferior to face-to-face’ or ‘Inferior to face-to-face.’ This contrasts with only 14 percent of the institutions offering fully online programs that classified online learning outcomes as ‘Inferior.’

Download the full report

Hat Tip to Tony Bates blog, “E-Learning & Distance Education Resources“

Govt report: online learners perform better

A report just released by the U.S. Department of Education:

“Evaluation of Evidence-based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies”

The May 2009 report is based on the review of 1,000 empirical studies of online learning from 1996-2008. In particular, researchers were interested in studies that “(a) contrasted an online to a face-to-face condition, (b) measured student learning outcomes, (c) used a rigorous research design, and (d) provided adequate information to calculate an effect size. As a result of this screening, 51 independent effects were identified that could be subjected to meta-analysis.”

The study found that …

“Students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction.”

An analysis of 51 study effects found in part:

1. “Students who took all or part of their class online performed better, on average, than those taking the same course through traditional face-to-face instruction.”
2. “Studies in which learners in the online condition spent more time on task than students in the face-to-face condition found a greater benefit for online learning.”
3. “The effectiveness of online learning approaches appears quite broad across different content and learner types.”
4. “Elements such as video or online quizzes do not appear to influence the amount that students learn in online classes. The research does not support the use of some frequently recommended online learning practices. Inclusion of more media in an online application does not appear to enhance learning.”
5. “Online learning can be enhanced by giving learners control of their interactions with media and prompting learner reflection.”

The advantage found in online learning apparently has nothing to do with the medium but rather time spent, curriculum, and pedagogy:

“Despite what appears to be strong support for online learning applications, the studies in this meta-analysis do not demonstrate that online learning is superior as a medium, In many of the studies showing an advantage for online learning, the online and classroom conditions differed in terms of time spent, curriculum and pedagogy. It was the combination of elements in the treatment conditions (which was likely to have included additional learning time and materials as well as additional opportunities for collaboration) that produced the observed learning advantages. At the same time, one should note that online learning is much more conducive to the expansion of learning time than is face-to-face instruction.”

Download full report

Read Inside Higher Ed review (July 11, 2009)

Hat tip Tony Bates (e-learning & distance education resources blog)

The mentor’s changing role in seminary education

The role of the mentor is changing in seminary education.

Yesterday’s seminary student probably reported to a field supervisor (at least a semester) who then reported to the seminary. Since yesterday’s seminary student typically had little ministry experience, a supervisor was useful and, frankly, often needed. 

Today’s seminary student is different- more likely to have ministry experience and little need for a field supervisor assigned by the seminary. What the student does need, however, is a coaching mentor to provide support for the learning journey; in seminary and following graduation.

Coaching mentors can provide a seminary student:

• Wisdom and discernment
• Life and ministry experience
• Timely advice
• New methods
• Skills
• Principles
• Important values and lessons

The emphasis yesterday was on empowering a field supervisor to provide feedback to the seminary on the progress of the student. 

The emphasis today is on empowering a seminary student to learn and grow from the feedback provided by a coaching mentor. 

Here’s how Paul Stanley and Robert Clinton describe the process in Connecting: The Mentoring Relationships You Need To Succeed in Life:

Coaching is a process of imparting encouragement and skills … empowerment of the mentoree is the result. A key to good coaching is observation (when possible), feedback, and evaluation. An experienced coach does not try to control the player (or mentoree), but rather seeks to inspire and equip him with the necessary motivation, perspective, and skills to enable him to excellent performance and effectiveness. A coach understands that experience is the teaching vehicle, but a wise coach knows the power of evaluated experience.

Seminary of the past vs. Seminary of the future

Seminary of the past: Come to us.
Seminary of the future: Let us come to you.

Seminary of the past: The classroom is the learning platform.
Seminary of the future: Your ministry is the learning platform. 

Seminary of the past: Learn, then serve. 
Seminary of the future: Learn while you serve. 

Seminary of the past: Our primary task is to teach you.
Seminary of the future: Our primary task is to help you learn.

Seminary of the past: Enroll in our educational program. 
Seminary of the future:  Let us join your learning journey.

Seminary of the past: We’ll be your academic parent. 
Seminary of the future: We’ll be your learning partner.

Sloan Report- online learning grows rapidly in U.S.

For each of the past six years, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has funded a study on the state of online learning in U.S. higher education based on survey responses from more than 2,500 colleges and universities. 

The 2008 report shows that online enrollments continue to grow at rates that far exceed the total student population with no signs of slowing. Specifically:

Over 3.9 million students were taking at least one online course during the fall 2007 term; a 12 percent increase over the number reported the previous year.

The 12.9 percent growth rate for online enrollments far exceeds the 1.2 percent growth of the overall higher education student population.

Over twenty percent of all U.S. higher education students were taking at least one online course in the fall of 2007.

Read the full report-
Staying the Course: Online Education in the United States, 2008

In 1997, Jones International University became the first, fully online university regionally accredited in the United States. To my knowledge, Rockbridge Seminary would be the first, fully online seminary to earn regional accreditation.

Can Seminaries CHANGE to a Deploy-and-Debrief Model?

Is it possible for seminaries to change from train-and-deploy to the deploy-and-debrief approach that Reggie McNeal calls for in Missional Renaissance: Changing the Scorecard for the Church? Here’s McNeal’s thinking:

Reggie McNeal calls seminaries to a deploy-and-debrief approach

The typical practice for preparing church leaders for their ministry roles proves woefully inadequate for developing kingdom movement leaders. Standard approaches to leadership training for clergy not only ignore biblical patterns but also violate even the most basic understanding of how people (and leaders) develop. The current preparation methodology follows a classroom and pretested certification model. How absurd! There is no correlation between earning high marks on academic tests and being able to lead people. Again, don’t hear what I’m not saying. I have studied some myself and think we need more, not less, theological emphasis. But it’s all a matter of how and when it’s delivered. And to whom. Of course, some seminary grads turn out to be leaders. But by and large, they were leaders when they entered. Seminary training enhanced their skills but didn’t provide them. We can no longer rely on the low percentage of leaders who make it through and the pathetic results we are reaping. We must abandon the train-and-deploy method. 

How did Jesus train leaders for the movement? He used the deploy-and-debrief method. This approach allowed him to take some pretty unpromising and in some cases mercurial candidates and turn them into movement leaders. He invited them to observe what he did, promising them on occasion that they would and could do what they saw him doing. After long hours of ministry, he routinely debriefed the day’s events and teachings. He sent his disciples out on assignments before they were ready, knowing they would make mistakes. He would then debrief their experiences to help them learn from those experiences. …

Questions created teaching moments. Occasionally, he pulled his leaders aside for more extensive briefing. “Come away with me” was not an invitation to a deeper devotional life but a leadership summons to discuss the successes and failures of an early mission trip. 

Movement leaders can and must still be prepared this way. Let’s start with the seminary clergy-training level. Eventually, the strangulating hold of accreditation will further relax to allow training regimens to be offered alongside deployment, employing deliver systems that permit people to stay put in their communities of relationship and leadership influence. Those wanting theological education to prepare for church leadership roles will no longer have to disrupt their families, move and live as transients for three to five years to secure their academic prize, and then have to try to reestablish life and relationships in some new place. Online technology is already creating nonresidential alternatives to the typical approach of residential studies. Seminaries will still offer a residential track for those who prefer it, but the main delivery will shift to nonresidential students who access online teaching at their own pace while integrating what they learn into their everyday life and ministry. This will greatly increase the scope of theological education. … Credentialing will certify a proven leader, not just a wannabe. 

Is it possible for seminaries to change to a deploy-and-debrief approach? Yes, I believe it is! How to make this change was one of the major design questions that had to be answered when planning the launch of the 100% online Rockbridge Seminary in 2003. Here are 5 design features we incorporated to move us closer to the deploy-and-debrief approach championed by Reggie McNeal:

1. Asking applicants to confirm they have a ministry role and church leaders to affirm their support for the applicant, both a requirement for admission
2. Designing learning exercises that utilize and build on a student’s sphere of ministry influence
3. Offering frequent, interactive forums that build a learning community of peers globally, wrestling with difficult ministry issues
4. Involving local ministry coaches who debrief and support students
5. Requiring students to build a ministry portfolio that demonstrates competency development

Is Rockbridge Seminary there yet? No. We are a work in progress.

Re-engineering seminary education is a journey that will need to be traveled over a generation.

The difference between 75% online & 100% online

Carol Twigg, executive director of  The National Center for Academic Transformation, spoke at a conference I attended several years back and used the invention of the ATM to describe real innovation in online learning: 

The first ATM was located inside a bank and was available only during banking hours. Real innovation did not occur until ATMs were placed outside the bank, as well as in malls, grocery stores, and airports, and became available 24 hours a day. ¹

A growing number of seminaries offer online courses, something that could hardly be considered innovative today. So where is the innovation? Not in the “online” but in the “learning.” 

Fully online seminary education allows students to STAY where God planted them. That means that the learning can be designed with the assumption that each student has a ministry learning platform. In other words, field education is no longer a component of seminary – it IS seminary. How does this change seminary design?

The design of course assignments and projects can assume that each student completes them within an actual ministry setting and under the guidance of a local mentor. The ivory tower is dismantled. Application of learning can happen immediately and in an authentic ministry context. 

The design of course discussion can assume that each student is able to contribute real-life perspective. Gone is the naivety and idealism of course discussions where no more than a few of the students actually serve in an authentic ministry role. 

The selection of faculty is no longer restricted by geography. A potential professor (assuming academic credentials) can be engaged in a ministry role anywhere and still be available to teach seminary students. 

As long as a seminary offers only 25%, 50%, or 75% of  a degree program online and requires students to complete the remaining courses in a face-to-face, traditional classroom, the ATM is still inside the bank. 

 

¹  Carol Twigg used the same illustration in this interview with The Technology Source

The Emerging Seminary Student

Matt Chandler, Pastor of The Village Church (Dallas), shared blog thoughts recently about the importance of seminary. If anyone thinks that the topic of seminary education no longer interests anyone, take a look at the blog comments that followed. 

Matt’s comments are on target … Seminary can be important, but is not necessary … New paradigm churches like The Village Church are more concerned about how well a person is equipped than how many degrees he has earned … Seminary offers a process of learning that has the structure and forces the discipline that is difficult for most ministers to maintain on their own.

The emerging seminary student

What I don’t see in Matt’s comments is the broader discussion about ministry development, the focus of a new type of seminary student that has captured my attention. 

The emerging seminary student that I see on the horizon:

1. Already has life and ministry experience, a sense of God’s call, and the need to find a learning partner. 
2. Comes to the classroom with perspective, questions, focus, and learning readiness.
3. Wants to integrate the “academic” with the “practical” and apply what is learned immediately. 
4. Is already thinking strategically about ministry. 
5. Is ready to engage and participate in the learning process rather than sit back passively and be taught.  
6. Thrives in a learning community. 

Thinking of Ministry as a Role, Not a Profession- What It Means for Seminaries

The “every member a minister” movement is growing. Reggie McNeal described it this way in Revolution in Leadership: Training Apostles for Tomorrow’s Church:

Typical church thinking views the ministry as clergy-driven and clergy-dominated, the province of those credentialed to represent God. The laity serves mostly by providing a resource pool of time, energy, and money to generate and operate the clergy’s program.

Missional churches empower God’s people for genuine ministry. They do not just invite them to come alongside the “professionals” as their helpers. (p. 39)

The biblical foundations for the movement are plainly presented in Greg Ogden’s Unfinished Business: Returning the Ministry to the People of God.

What is the implication for seminaries?

The founders of Rockbridge Seminary wrestled with this question:

How do we re-engineer seminary to serve the church that teaches every member ministry?

As now seen in the design of Rockbridge Seminary, we shifted traditional seminary thinking in 4 ways:

1. We view ministry as a role, not as a profession. No distinction is made between volunteer and vocational ministry.

2. We view seminary education as ministry development, not credentialing. Our purpose is to help a student fulfill his or her calling to service.

3. We view an academic program as a learning journey to be walked, not a series of courses to be finished.

4. We view seminary faculty as learning and ministry mentors whose primary objective is to help students reach ministry development goals.

Can Seminary Students Learn Ministry without a Ministry?

I have heard the criticism for years. Someone completes a seminary degree, takes a position at a church, and doesn’t know how to minister. Sometimes the criticism was fair. Sometimes not. After all, seminaries make convenient targets on which to blame a multitude of sins. But it did lead me to this question:

Should a seminary require someone to be in ministry?

How can a seminary teach someone to be a minister if the student is not engaged in ministry?

My conclusion? Not very well, if at all. I remember my fellow seminary students who were engaged in ministry while completing their seminary education. Having a ministry platform on which to apply and test what they were learning in the classroom made them a completely different kind of student. I have found the same to be true with the thousands of seminary students I have taught over the last two decades:

1. They searched for answers while other students didn’t even know the questions.
2. They had learning focus while other students wandered around in an intellectual wilderness fascinated with issues that have no relevance to actual ministry.
3. They knew something about leading people while other students didn’t have a clue.

When Rockbridge Seminary launched, we made the decision that applicants MUST be engaged in a ministry (whether volunteer or vocational) and have confirmation from a church leader where they serve. Consequently, we were able to build learning exercises and assessment instruments into every Rockbridge Seminary course with the assumption that a student has a ministry platform on which to learn.

And yes, we have rejected applicants who didn’t meet this requirement.