Online Quaker classes

I’ve just signed up for Bea­con Hill’s Friends House­’s Quak­er Stud­ies class on “Moo­dle, Tech­nique / Tech­nol­o­gy” that begins First Month 12.

An edu­ca­tor F/friend of mine has gushed on about Moo­dle, the open
source edu­ca­tion sys­tem and I have to admit it’s always looked intrigu­ing. I’ve taught a
num­ber of real-world Quak­erism classes
and I’ve won­dered whether online cours­es could help con­nect Friends and
seek­ers iso­lat­ed by dis­tance or the­ol­o­gy. I’ve been want­i­ng to try out
one of Bea­con Hill’s online class­es for awhile. 

From the description:

Is online teach­ing new to you?

Don’t know where to start?

We’ll
begin with the sim­plest inter­ac­tive course:
a “wel­come to the class” sec­tion with a read­ing and one forum. We’ll
talk about tech­nol­o­gy: how set­tings change
the forum inter­face; but we’ll also dis­cuss teach­ing tech­nique: how
to present intro­duc­to­ry mate­r­i­al to students
who may have a wide range of expe­ri­ence and expectations. 

Over the 10
weeks, we’ll cov­er: intro­duc­ing the moo­dle envi­ron­ment; chats; forums;
choic­es and sur­veys; lessons; assign­ments; data­bas­es; wikis; quizzes.

You will have your own les­son space to explore all these tools and will
be expect­ed to look at each oth­er’s work and react to it. By March we
should all be ready to design and offer cre­ative Moo­dle cours­es of our
own.

Class­es only cost $25. You can find out more about the Bea­con Hill’s Moo­dle online class and all their Quak­er Stud­ies class­es. If any­one would be inter­est­ed in some sort of QuakerQuaker-sponsored class­es, let me know. We’ve got a lot of well-qualified Quak­er teach­ers in the net­work and a lot of iso­lat­ed Friends want­i­ng to learn more.

4 thoughts on “Online Quaker classes

  1. Keep me in the loop if this builds any ener­gy. I’d be down with work­ing with some folks to get some con­tent out. Per­haps more e‑seminar than class? Intriguing…

    -Cal­lid

    1. @Callid: will def­i­nite­ly announce any­thing that hap­pens. I would imag­ine that it would take doing a few of these to under­stand the dif­fer­ence between an online class and a reg­u­lar real-world Q101 class (which I’ve taught at a few meet­ings). Internet-connected Quak­ers tend to be a lot more knowl­edge­able about the the­o­ry of Friends while at the same times over­es­ti­mat­ing their knowl­edge of the the­o­ry of Friends. And who would enroll? Aver­age meet­ing Friends? New inquir­ers? Vague­ly dis­grun­tled Friends?

  2. I would def­i­nite­ly be inter­est­ed in Quak­er Stud­ies cours­es offered online! I’ve been feel­ing a bit dis­con­nect­ed from my local meet­ing of late and would wel­come the chance to engage my spir­it in some oth­er way.

    1. @Nate: Very cool. I think it helps to expand our hori­zons past the local meet­ing some­times and see how oth­er Friends live (that seemed the moti­va­tion of a lot of com­mit­tee mem­bers and pro­fes­sion­al Friends I used to meet at FGC meetings). 

      It would be espe­cial­ly inter­est­ing if we could get the kind of diversity-of-Friends you find on Quak​erQuak​er​.org into the same online class.

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