Photo courtesy Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary

The campus at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Charlotte, N.C.

January 19, 2010 | As president of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Mass., Robert E. Cooley took a surprising approach when the school opened a satellite campus in Charlotte, N.C., in 1991. To make it possible for more students to go to the school, he decided the school would go to the students.

The strategy: Focus on non-traditional education for working adults. Students would come to class on weekends or at night. During the week they could continue their studies at home, meeting with groups of students in their area. The aim was to shape a seminary education around the lives and jobs of adult students.

Now the wider reach in theological education pioneered at GCTS-Charlotte is about to be extended beyond its corner of the Southeast to students around the country and the world. The new goal is to reach adults who couldn’t obtain formal theological training because they were either too far from a seminary or too busy with ministry or other work.

The seminary will do that by using new communication technology to transmit Gordon-Conwell’s tradition of theological education, said Joel Harlow, an adjunct professor of biblical languages at GCTS-Charlotte and a veteran in distance education.

“We don’t intend to do anything radically different than what we’re doing now, but we want to do it better and smarter and do it for more people,” Harlow said.

GCTS-Charlotte is making the evolution through a pilot project supported by a $500,000 matching grant from the Kern Family Foundation of Waukesha, Wis. The grant was one of six the foundation gave to theological schools in early 2009 under a program called “Leading Through Change: Innovation in Theological Schools.”

At GCTS-Charlotte, the innovation will combine Internet-based communication with a concentrated residential component to create something educators call “hybrid” distance education. The hybrid version will require students to be on campus only two or three weeks a year. That will expand the potential student body from those close enough to commute monthly to anyone who can get to Charlotte for a few weeks annually.

“We’re not proposing that people never come to our campus. This is not a University of Phoenix model,” Harlow said. “This will be akin to a doctorate of ministry model in which students spend two weeks every year on campus and then work in subgroups in their area.”

Tutoring on steriods

The technical side of connecting new technology to a new approach to teaching at GCTS-Charlotte will be handled by Harlow. Prior to returning to GCTS-Charlotte to teach -- he earned his master's of theological studies there in 1993 -- Harlow taught for nine years at Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, where he specialized in online education. Over the years, he has taught nearly 1,000 online Greek and Hebrew students from around the world.

The new generation of distance learning will take advantage of technology not just to make theological education more accessible, but also to engage students in new ways, he said. Harlow said the new kind of online education contemplated at GCTS-Charlotte will change the methods of teaching and the tempo of learning.

In a traditional class, Harlow said, a teacher might give a 15-minute introduction to Martin Luther and students would take notes and try to absorb the information. In an online class, he said, students can replay the introduction until they fully understand it.

“Traditionally, the student got one shot at grasping that information,” Harlow said. “This way the students can go back and look at it 30 times if they want.”

Online classes allow students to learn at their own pace and better prepare them when they do meet in a classroom. Instead of hearing new material there, students work through content they’ve already seen and reviewed, Harlow said.

“In class we do problem-solving instead of lecturing,” Harlow said. “It’s a tutoring session on steroids.”

A new approach to online theological education would appeal to Nic Uebel. He’s commuting twice a month from Blacksburg, Va., to Charlotte as he pursues a master’s degree in biblical studies at GCTS-Charlotte . The drive is three hours each way.

“I think it would definitely be helpful. Obviously driving down there isn’t my favorite thing, especially being away from my home and my wife once or twice a month,’’ said Uebel, 27, who holds a degree in computer engineering from Virginia Tech. Uebel recently returned to his alma mater to work in the Baptist Collegiate Ministries program there.

That approach would work for Uebel, who said he appreciates the direct contact he has with professors during his weekends on campus. Even if the school didn’t require his presence, he said he would have gone anyway in his first year to develop a sense of the school and his teachers.

“That’s something I really have valued this semester, to hear them talk about their life and what they have done in ministry,” he said.

GCTS-Charlotte hopes to find a way to offer students far beyond Uebel’s commuting range a combination of rapid and easy Internet access to classes, discussions and videos, limited commuting and a concentrated period of onsite contact with teachers.

So reaching out online won’t mean a complete separation from campus. For one, the seminary’s accrediting agency, the Association of Theological Schools, won’t allow advanced degrees in programs that are completely online.