Seminary Distance Learning

Seminary distance learning is a field of theological education that concentrates on the pedagogy, technology and instructional methods for those students that for one reason or another cannot attend traditional education systems. This way the teachers and student are able to communicate at times of their own choosing by use of printed or electronic media. At the same time, this type of education also gives the students the possibility to communicate in real time with their teachers by means of web/teleconference devices. There is also a special type of seminary distance learning that requires the students’ on-site presence to courses, and this is considered to be some sort of hybrid traditional/distance education program. This type of learning usually uses several forms of technology, such as radio, television, audio-video conferencing, computers, and Internet. This makes it a very capable form of learning that gives the student a lot of studying sources and at the same time, it gives them the possibility to study at their own pace.

Distance education may have had some issues regarding the testing of material, but today there are many seminary distance learning programs that are provide by famous colleges that have proven their efficiency. The delivery of the material is also not a problem for a long time now as the delivery services being used are a way of making sure the students have the materials available at all times and are able to study at their own leisure. However, there may be a problem while considering the testing techniques of distance learning. The lack of teacher control makes students vulnerable to cheating on their tests or assignments. However, many such schools address integrity issues to their students and in order to ensure this integrity they have quite harsh measures for those who are caught cheating. Other distance learning schools use different ways in order to ensure the integrity of their testing, thus many of them choose to require their students to take the exams in proctored settings.

Also, most of the seminary distance learning programs have adapted their assignments so that they are larger and longer, so that during the tests the students are supposed to search the subject and prove that they have done the studying work. Most such tests today are not oriented towards memorizing but towards what students make of the information they assimilate. Thus, testing becomes much easier because the answers required are not reflecting something that students can find in their materials. Another way of ensuring integrity during the exams, seminary distance learnig schools use online conference testing, where students have to give quick answers to questions before they can pass to the following step. From experience, it has been learnt that exams and bigger tests are quite hard to regulate, thus in the case of those students who are mark-oriented, they cannot be completely trusted with such exams. However, distance learning programs have started to give less and less importance to big exams and even to quizzes so that students are not chasing grades, but knowledge.