Allan and Glynis believe they have a calling to help the Christian Church in it’s Matt:28 Mission to “Make disciples of all nations”. They are working through the spheres of influence of education and business. The specific area of Allan’s expertise is Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL).  He is called to education and Glynis to business administration and management – both are life long learners up-skilling continually.

Allan’s strengths and calling is to serve the practitioner teacher/educators introducing them to the “how to’s”.  He recently retired from a full time university position as a learning designer, to work on building curriculum to help Church leaders and teachers embrace this important new type of education.  He is planning a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) targeting Christian Educators in the Majority World, seminars and courses and even the architecture for an Undergraduate and Masters Program in the near future.  Here are some of the areas this curriculum will be targeting.

The Challenge: Make Disciples of All Nations! …. Some of The Big Questions

1. Is there value in focusing on roles and order? Is there an order for different people in the learning process?  Is there God’s order for teachers like there is God’s order for husbands for example? What is the role of the teacher, the role of the student and the role of the Holy Spirit in the learning process (which now is way more than just in the physical classroom)?
2. What is Transformational Learning …. what does it look like in graduates/disciples today? How far should we define graduate attributes and capabilities and is there value in mapping them to learning outcomes, activities and assessments? How do we address or integrate content in context?  Is there such a thing as as a Christian Social Constructivist approach to learning? If there is, then what would it look like?
3. What is wisdom, knowledge and understanding? How do they differ and how do they contribute to transformative learning? Does the source of wisdom, knowledge and understanding have the same weight in people’s perceptions?  Are our expectations balanced and at the right level?
4. What is Learning Design and what in the current teaching methodology needs to shift?  Should we shift from teacher centred to student centred and from content centred to activity centred learning? What are the implications for the teachers and the students?
5. How do we engage students and integrate technology into the learning process?  How do we use technology to help correlate what the Lord is saying through the teacher and the students together?  What are we to expect?
6. Is it valid to say: “the traditional lecture is dead, long live the lecture … as long as it is interactive, that is”?   Would the idea of flip teaching or as it is commonly called the flipped classroom help? Would that work even in the local church and all forms of Christian Education?  How should we use technology to repackage and repurpose content and free up the all too important face-to-face time from didactic one-way delivery? Is this worth the time and resources and significant shifting most preacher/teachers would have to make?
7. Does online facilitation and the use of social media or Web 2.0 technologies empower teachers and students in learning and teaching?  Can it actually improve the educational experience and help the learning community be more open to the revelation flow of the Holy Spirit? Could we explore new ways to hear God’s voice?
8. How do teachers and facilitators make sense of the 2000 free learning and teaching technologies running around the internet right now?  What’s of value and what’s not?  How does a church, institution or ministry get started using these tools – especially using a learning management system (LMS)?
9. How do we provide professional development for Christian teachers to be thought leaders and cutting edge practitioners in the field of 21st century learning and teaching?  Does all this help making disciples anyway?
10. Will learning-by-doing open up new horizons in our ability to make disciples of all Nations?  One area of instructional or learning design that is growing in popularity is called Immersive Learning, i.e role plays and simulations. Can the church use these new approaches?