SHAWNEE, Okla. (BP)–Via the information super highway, ministers and laypeople alike can explore the Old Testament and gain college credit in the process.
Oklahoma Baptist University anticipates providing education in a new package, primarily to remote and rural nontraditional students, through on-line Internet course work. The pilot course, Old Testament History and Literature, will be available this August in conjunction with OBU’s Ministry Training Institute. If the pilot course is successful and meets a need, it will be expanded to include other courses.
MTI has long been designed to reach students who could not attend classes on OBU’s Shawnee campus. Off-campus sites for classes have included Oklahoma, Indiana, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Nebraska, Oregon, Washington and Kansas. Through MTI, students can achieve a diploma in Christian studies and use the course credits toward an associate or bachelor’s degree.
“It is an experimental program,” said Dick Rader, vice president of religious life and dean of OBU’s Joe L. Ingram School of Christian Service. “It’s also a ministry. Our goal is to reach distance learners and primarily nontraditional students.”
Rader also stressed the course, in keeping with the university’s reputation, will challenge the student. “This is not a correspondence course,” he said. “It will be a pretty heady course. The students will have to be serious about it. There will be interaction between the students and the instructor.”
Robert Dawson, associate professor of applied ministry at OBU, will teach the initial course. Students also will be required to secure a trained minister or educator as a proctor who will assist OBU in offering exams.
“The biggest challenge is not to have a course on-line, but to have a course on-line that is up to OBU’s standards,” Dawson said. “That’s what I’m really looking for. I want to make this as close to an equivalent of what they might expect in the classroom as possible.”
Part of the OBU experience has always been in developing educational relationships as well. Toward that end, Dawson plans to include time for classmates to get to know each other and their instructor.
“I want this to be as interactive as possible,” he said. “I’d like to get to know each student and have them get to know and learn from each other. We’ll do that through e-mail and through a link server.”
Dawson added while students won’t get the benefit of face-to-face lectures, the trade-off will be that the students will be required to research and find articles related to the course work.
Tuition is $110 per credit hour, plus a $25 non-refundable enrollment fee. All charges must be paid in full before the student begins the course. Class size is limited to 15 students.
For more information, Rader can be contacted at (405) 878-2377.
