What is Spirit?

In the MTSO Statement of Purpose it is written, "we attend to the theological, spiritual, and vocational formation of a diverse group of students involved in a wide range of pursuits."

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An assertion that often arises within the conversations regarding tech is that we, as a school, do not intend to foster a fully-online course program, and part of the reason for this is that our faculty resonates with a resistance to commodifying the education of our students into easily consumable packages. Instead, we are, as it says above, concerned with the formation of individuals, and our pursuit of the hybridized classroom, as opposed to fully online education, is conditioned by the presumption that interrelation within communities requires face time. "Face time," I would argue is another way of indicating an intermingling of spirit.

The constant task before us appears to be a holding in tension both the assertion that we must remain skeptics of the presumed efficacy of online education - or even more generally, technologically augmented education of any kind - while also actively pursuing augmenting education with technology as a "vehicle toward broader interconnectedness and relevance," as an MTSO colleague put it.

So it is, to some extent, insurmountable (to the point of hysterics) to translate interpersonal in-class time and time spent doing online work on the grounds of how to measure the difference between the physical intermingling of humans and online intermingling. Sure, there are studies that show that students often learn, and learn well, through online courses (however verifiable) but is learning material equivalent to attending to the spiritual formation of our students - our stated goal?

The title of this entry is "what is spirit?" and less an answer to this question what is offered here, to far better scholars of such questions, is a challenge. As we continually assess our identity in an ever-changing world-context, I offer this opportunity, a pause, to motivate our thinking about thinking- about-technology away from the assumption that we are working to keep up, attempting to stay current in the trends of education. Instead, you, our faculty, are the most valuable resource to think us beyond trends in favor of thinking about the foundations of what we are, as spiritual beings, and how the privilege of being religious scholars can inform the world how to approach the human relation to technology.