The Overseas Ministries Study Center (OMSC) at Princeton Theological Seminary launched an online certificate program in lived theology and world Christianity in the 2022-23 academic year. This year-long academic course introduces scholars and church leaders from around the world to practical theology and qualitative research with a focus on applying these methods to their own unique contexts (learn more at https://omsc.ptsem.edu/what-we-do/digital-curriculum-certificate/).
The content delivery for this course of study follows normative modes for online learning including video lectures, readings, and discussion boards. Over the course of the program’s three years, however, the program’s designers have worked to integrate more high touch dynamics including small group and one on one research mentoring via video calls.
This presentation will provide an evaluation and exposition of the program’s most recent innovation: the use of “learning hubs” based in specific geographic locations where select students can meet in person to discuss what they are learning and their application. In this way, the shared uniform content that learners engage in online is grounded in a local context and community. Tools and perspectives in practical theology and qualitative research, largely articulated by Euro-American scholars, are reworked and applied to different questions and situations by learning hub leaders. In both Ghana and the Philippines, emphases were given to interreligious relations and indigenous practices. Coming together, the program is becoming a network for cross-cultural and intercultural discussion on the merits and deficiencies in theology and qualitative research from a global perspective.
In the 2024-25 academic year, learning hubs were instituted at the Sanneh Institute in Accra, Ghana, and De La Salle University in Manila, Philippines, where on-site learning hub coordinators gathered their six participants monthly to discuss how qualitative research and theological reflection might be incorporated into their unique cultural contexts. As of the writing of this proposal, OMSC is finalizing details for learning hubs at the Polin Institute in Turkü, Finland, and Alder College in Kohima (Nagaland), India, for the 2025-26 academic year.
This presentation will feature a review of the online pedagogy behind the program and its learning hub extensions vis-à-vis scholarship on globalization and education with Roland Robertson’s conception of “glocalization” (see, for example, Glocal Theological Education by Bard Norheim and Shantelle Weber as well as Social Glocalisation and Education: Social Work, Health Sciences, and Practical Theology Perspectives on Change, edited by Hans Hobelsberger). OMSC’s program is evaluated in dialogue with Giulia Messina Dahlberg and Sangeeta Bagga-Gupta’s empirical study of hybrid online learning, “Understanding Glocal Learning Spaces. An Empirical Study of Languaging and Transmigrant Positions in the Virtual Classroom” (Learning, Media and Technology 39, no. 4, 2014) which argues “that online environments support meaning-making where it is possible to identify alternative ways of (co)constructing and mediating learning. Such hybridity as well as the performative character of learning and identity display have important implications for online glocal communities.” This insight has expressed itself within OMSC’s learning hub in unique ways with lessons that can be integrated with other approaches to theological education in global south contexts like the “Theological Education by Extension” model pioneered in the 1960s in Central America and has spread throughout the world with its own expansive literature.
The strengths and weakness of the program will be reviewed using pre-recorded testimony from interviews with learning hub coordinators. Sample presentations from participants will also be made available to provide a window into the kind of research that participants from these learning hubs are pursuing. All of this provides one window into how scholars and church leaders from the global south are engaging online learning, practical theology, and qualitative research beyond common categories of homiletics and pastoral counseling. We hope this presentation will open and facilitate larger conversations about online pedagogy and the future of theological qualitative research around the world.
For more information about the program’s academic grounding, growth, and reception. See media from Princeton Seminary’s website at https://ptsem.edu/about/the-quad/news/omsc-introduces-online-certificate-in-lived-theology-and-world-christianity/ and https://ptsem.edu/about/the-quad/news/engaging-lived-theology-around-the-world-with-omscs-online-certificate-program/
In addition, an academic reflections on the program can be found on OMSC’s blog, The Occasional, by learning hub coordinator, Dr. Matthew Krabill (https://omsc.ptsem.edu/pursuing-lived-theology-in-the-context-of-world-christianity-part-3-honoring-african-legacies-in-partnership-with-the-sanneh-institute/). Reflections by Manila learning hub students are also accessible (https://omsc.ptsem.edu/more-affordable-god-my-filipino-way-of-spirituality-through-lived-theology/ and https://omsc.ptsem.edu/applying-gadamers-fusion-of-horizons-to-lived-theology-a-filipino-perspective/).
We believe this presentation resonates deeply with the Practical Theology Unit’s emphasis on “Transformative Teaching and Learning in Practical Theology: Creative Approaches, Global Conversations, and Contextual Practices.” OMSC’s new online certificate program qualifies as an innovative and experimental teaching method in practical theology that seeks to creatively engage diverse cultural and socio-political contexts. The learning hub model is designed to foster theoretical reflections on learning processes in collaborative and participatory ways. We hope the assessment and evaluation presented here provides a case study for others to consider
The Overseas Ministries Study Center (OMSC) at Princeton Theological Seminary launched an online certificate program in lived theology and world Christianity in the 2022-23 academic year. This year-long academic course introduces scholars and church leaders from around the world to practical theology and qualitative research with a focus on applying these methods to their own unique contexts. This presentation will provide an evaluation and exposition of the program’s most recent innovation: the use of “learning hubs” based in specific geographic locations where select students can meet in person to discuss what they are learning and their application. In this way, the shared uniform content that learners engage in online is grounded in a local context and community.