When: June 10, 2021, 3:30 pm - Thursday

Where: Swang 108

Session 5

Session Abstract

Technology touches every aspect of our lives. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the classroom. Whether it’s the “old school” technology of a chalkboard and mimeograph machine or the latest digital assessment software, technology is an important part of teaching and learning. But the technology is just a tool: it supports teaching and learning. It does not replace or circumvent it. This session of the Teaching, Learning and Technology section provides three papers in conversation regarding the relationship between technology and the educational enterprise we all engage in.

 

Paper Abstracts

Wilhemina Odarkor Ofori, Heritage Christian College, Accra, Ghana, “An Unstable Terrain: The Impact of Emerging Technologies on Academic Libraries in Africa”

Drastic changes in the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and especially web technologies are altering the way libraries the world over provide information services. This paper explores the opportunities and challenges of integrating ICT innovations in African academic libraries through a case study of selected Ghanaian academic libraries.

 

Nathan Bills, Heritage Christian College, Accra, Ghana, “Genesis 1 as Pedagogy”

David I. Smith persuasively argues in On Christian Teaching: Practicing Faith in the Classroom (2018) that theorists of Christian educational theory have given sparse attention to what difference faith makes to the actual practice of teaching. I take up his challenge to explore how teaching practices beginning on the first day of an introductory Old Testament survey class might themselves embody Christian commitments.

 

Stephen D. Lowe, Liberty University, “Preparing Students for Ministry in the Digital Age”

The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic forced congregations to find alternative ways to gather as the body of Christ using whatever digital technologies at their disposal. Many of these congregations do not plan to stop using digital ministry once physical church gatherings become commonplace again. Now that the digital ministry genie is out of the bottle, what are educational institutions doing to prepare students for ministry in the digital age? This presentation will focus on one approach for how institutions conceptualize digital church ministry courses (while honoring our traditional understanding of church ministry) that open up new ministry possibilities in a post-COVID world.

Speakers

Melinda (Mindi) Thompson, Abilene Christian University, Convener

• Wilhemina Odarkor Ofori, Heritage Christian College, “An Unstable Terrain: The Impact of Emerging Technologies on Academic Libraries in Africa”
• Nathan Bills, Heritage Christian College, “Genesis 1 as Pedagogy”
• Stephen D. Lowe, Liberty University, “Preparing Students for Ministry in the Digital Age”
• Jan Cohu, Lipscomb University, Respondent
• Tim Westbrook, Harding University, Respondent
• Melinda (Mindi) Thompson, Abilene Christian University, Respondent