The 2009 Sloan Survey of Online Learning reveals that enrollment rose by nearly 17 percent from a year earlier.  The survey of more than 2,500 colleges and universities in the United States finds approximately 4.6 million students were enrolled in at least one online course in fall 2008, the most recent term for which figures are available.  According to the survey, both the bad economy and the flu were significant factors contributing to the increase.

The Society of Biblical Literature (of which I am a member) has just initiated a survey that will be used as part of the preparation for a new educational web site called “The World of the Bible: Exploring people, places, and passages“.  Please take a few minutes and fill out the anonymous survey, as your feedback and comments will be immensely helpful.  Thanks!

Well, it has been a while, hasn’t it?  Again.  Apparently, I have had a busy fall …

I gave a presentation at the 8th Hawaii International Conference on Education a couple of days ago, and it was called “Putting a Face on E-Learning: A Strategy to Integrate Faculty Videos into YouTube, iTunes U and a Virtual Learning Environment.”  The primary focus of my talk was to help provide some “big picture” thoughts on how faculty can work with the rest of the university (administration, marketing, etc) to help ensure long-term success.  If you are interested, you can download my presentation here.

Well, it has been a long time since my last posting.  For a number of reasons.    However, I am pleased to say that there are nine world religion video summaries that are now available on iTunes U!   They are a part of the RELS201 Introduction to World Religions course that I teach at APUS.  I hope that you find them to be useful.

For those of you who have been following the development of the Certificate of Christian Studies at UNBC the last couple of years, you may be interested in knowing about the future.  No, not the whole “future”, just the future of Christian Studies.    The course offering will be expanding from six courses to seven, which will reflect a modification to the Church History course(s) and the Old/New Testament courses, and the addition of a new course called

Just a quick posting today.  Did you know that there are about a zillion books that are freely available/downloadable online?  Of course you knew that.  But … did you know that over 30,000 of them are nicely categorized and searchable at Project Gutenberg?  Check it out, and also look at their list of the top 100 books.

Here is a test – does the subject line above strike you as intriguing or uninteresting?  Well, believe it or not, if you identify yourself as either Jewish or Christian, you should find it interesting.  Monotheism and monolatry both have to do with how the people of the Old Testament / Hebrew Bible (and also today) viewed God.  How many gods are there?  What is his (their) nature?  How should he be worshipped?  Those are pretty big questions!

I reviewed a great book a couple of months ago called Jesus and the God of Israel, in which the author (Richard Bauckham) described the similarities, differences and relationship between monotheism (the belief in the existence of one God) and monolatry (the exclusive worship of one God).  Fascinating book.  In Bauckham’s opinion (which I agree with), the Old Testament reflects both, and somehow, the two wind their way together in both Judaism and early Christianity, and they influenced how Jesus was understood and responded to in the first century.  If you like to “think deeply” about the nature of God and Jesus, you may enjoy this book!

Interesting question, isn’t it?  I was asked that question a few days ago, and I pointed the person to one verse and then made one observation (just a summary of our discussion!).  The practice of cremation is not specifically mentioned in the Bible.  However, a section in the Bible that talks about how a Christian’s “eternal” body will be different than his/her “physical” body is 1 Corinthians 15:42-44 (make sure you read it in context).  The eternal does not seem to be limited by the physical.  Also, the physical body starts to decay the moment the person dies, so whether the process takes a few minutes (eg, cremation) or a few years (eg, burial), the end result would seem to be the same, wouldn’t it?

What do think about cremation?

Have you ever wanted to look at a 1,600 year old manuscript of the Bible?  If so, you can now go to Codex Sinaiticus and view digital images of the actual pages of the ancient codex.  It is pretty impressive, especially since the actual pages themselves are stored in various locations around the world and are not easily accessible.

The hand-written Greek text contains both the Septuagint and the New Testament, and you can zoom in/out, and view both transcriptions and translations of the codex.  Check it out!

Mixed in with all of the useless stuff on the Internet, there are occasionally some great resources.  And Covenant Theological Seminary’s Worldwide Classroom is definitely one of the good ones!  They provide FREE lecture manuscripts, study guides and mp3’s for twenty courses in spirituality, Biblical studies, theology, ministry, etc.  If you are looking to deepen and expand your Christian worldview, why don’t you take some time and explore the Worldwide Classroom.