Correspondence Course By Internet

A street in the Ukraine -

Back in 1999, Misha took a correspondence course

from Bible Mission in Ukraine. He was one of 4,000

students who received lessons in the mail, read the

materials, and filled out the question sheets he had

been sent. After being mailed back to Bible Mission,

his papers were corrected and returned to him via

post several weeks later. Misha was grateful for this

opportunity to further his knowledge of the Bible.

However, he often felt so alone in his studies, and

by the time he got answers to the questions he jotted

in the margins of his papers, he had almost forgotten

the questions! About halfway through the course,

Misha lost motivation and never finished.

How does a correspondence course, such as the one

Misha enrolled in, differ from eDOT distance-learning

courses? Some of the fundamental differences include:

*Interaction and collaboration between the students

and between the students and the facilitator

*Much faster turnaround time in a distance-learning

course than with a lesson that has to be mailed via
“snail mail”

*A weekly schedule of learning activities and specific

completion date for each course

*A variety of methods such as flash graphics (with

moving elements), film clips (e.g., the JESUS film),

and interactive maps, in distance learning

One of the largest correspondence schools in the

evangelical world was begun in 1901 by Moody

Bible Institute (MBI). In the late '90s MBI launched

its distance-education program, Moody Online.

When MBI offered eDOT the use of its distance-

learning courses in 2000, many people envisioned

our taking those online courses and translating them

into one of ten or so languages in Europe, putting

them on the Web, and “Voila!” we could have a

distance-learning program in place. Unfortunately,

it’s not quite that easy!

In bringing distance-learning courses from MBI to

Europe, there are a number of important—and time-

consuming—steps that have to take place to make

the courses effective in other cultures. Next month

we will walk through the process, hopefully helping

you better understand the process and how you can

pray more knowledgeably for the eDOT staff as they

work together to bring new Bible training
tools to Europe.