Double-click to graduate
Christian
colleges experiment
with education by Internet
By
Kevin Heinrichs
ChristianWeek staff
Long used as a research tool for post-secondary studies, the internet is becoming the classroom itself.
Following the lead of secular universities, Canadian Christian colleges are expanding their distance education programs to include courses offered on-line. Colleges such as Prairie Bible Institute in Three Hills, Alberta are just beginning to test the waters of internet education.
"We want to take as much advantage of the internet as possible," says Arnold Stauffer, associate dean at PBI. The school will offer just a few courses this fall including one on Exodus. A student will download each lesson made up of two to six pages of material and submit course material to the professor via e-mail. Eventually, says Stauffer, students will be able to participate in live discussions.
While many institutions already have a distance education program through correspondence, the internet makes it easier for students around the world to register for their program. "We may have students from Calgary cooperating on a collaborative project with someone from Switzerland," says Stauffer.
Class size will initially be limited to 12 to 15 students so that discussions don’t get too cumbersome, and to ease the professor’s workload.
Growing trend
The leader in Christian education technology in Canada is Eastern Pentecostal Bible College in Peterborough, Ontario.
The college offers a course on the Old Testament available entirely on CD-ROM. It includes 60 minutes of video, more than 1,100 sound clips and interactive testing. The college also offers courses through its "Distance Education Centres" located in sponsoring churches in five Ontario cities and one in Newfoundland. The centres offer a combination of video-conferencing, face-to-face and internet instruction.
But Nil LavallŽe, EPBC’s dean of distance education, says the greatest potential for growth is in the on-line courses offered over the World Wide Web. EPBC launched seven college-level internet courses in 1996; it now offers 25 courses via the internet, attracting students from New Zealand to the Yukon. Student registrations went from 25 the first semester, to 125 in the past spring semester, a five-fold increase in two years.
Some programs, like the Bachelor of Ministry, are particularly well suited to online education, says LavallŽe. While being able to participate in class discussions posted on a threaded electronic bulletin board, the student is able to participate in ministry in a church in his home community.
"It’s more effective than parachuting in for two or three months of interim ministry, then being pulled out," says LavallŽe. While studying from home, a student can stay active in his home church throughout a four-year program.
LavallŽe says Christian colleges have been slow to develop internet curriculum because they are often academically conservative and concerned about costs. But he says the cost to EPBC is only about $2,000 to develop a course, once the infrastructure, like a computer server, is in place. "We haven’t bought into hiring consultants or external developers. We have a simple product, but it works."
Cybercollege
EPBC’s model has attracted interest from several other Christian colleges. Tyndale College and Seminary in Toronto, Briercrest Bible College in Caronport, Saskatchewan and Providence College near Winnipeg are in talks with EPBC this summer to develop a cooperative relationship that enables them to "share" internet courses.
"It would really be a collaborative cybercollege," says Larry Willard, vice principal at Tyndale. A student may register for an internet course at Tyndale, for example, but the actual course would originate and be administered from EPBC. Once other colleges develop more on-line courses, the sharing would be reciprocal.
Willard says Tyndale has stayed on the sidelines of electronic education to wait for the bugs to be worked out of the system. Tyndale is offering its first courses on-line in September, one an undergraduate course on C.S. Lewis, another a graduate course.
Christian colleges are following a trend that is a bit more advanced in secular education.
Athabasca University, for example, delivers all of its courses by distance learning. Billed as "Canada’s Open University," its Alberta "campus" contains no students, just administrative facilities. The university has 12,000 students taking 400 courses, many of which are offered on-line or have on-line components. Most students study part-time in their own communities while working full or part-time.
LavallŽe sees internet education not only as the way of the future for Christian education, but the path to survival. As institutions compete for students, he says the internet option not only attracts students from a wider base, it helps them retain current students.
"In the long run, if schools continue to see a decrease in on-campus registrations, we’re hoping to retain our overall market share," says LavallŽe.
So will these virtual colleges replace their brick-and-mortar counterparts?
Not yet at any rate. Various accrediting associations have recognized the trend and imposed restrictions on the number of distance education courses an institution can offer.
"We recognize it’s not for everyone. Many young people need the residential environment and the on campus experience," says LavallŽe.
But most administrators agree that electronic education appeals to a wide segment of adult learners.
"In my opinion," says Tyndale’s Willard, "whether professors like it or not, it’s the way of the future. People like it and they’re learning."
