Academics

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Stumbling at Seminary: Cheating

In an interview with the dean of students at a leading evangelical seminary, I asked about the most common reasons people did not complete seminary.  One of his answers was a shock to me: students get caught cheating.
Seminary students have ample opportunity to cheat.

You can plagiarize-representing the academic work of others as your own.  [...]

Popularity: 40% [?]

September 8th, 2008 | Mark | 7 comments | Continued
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The Seminary Book Review

One of your most common assignments at any seminary is going to be the sometimes joyful, often tedious, yet always necessary book review. While every seminary will have different requirements for their book reviews, nearly all fall into a fairly similar mold. How can you attack this task in such [...]

Popularity: 34% [?]

September 3rd, 2008 | Travis | 4 comments | Continued
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Seminary Syllabus Strategy #4: A Study Plan for Each Major Exam

Similar to creating a writing plan for papers, you should block out dedicated study time for major exams. If you do this now, at the beginning of the semester (and stick to your schedule), then you won’t be pinched to find time to study.
It’s pretty simple:

Reserve study blocks beginning about a week before the [...]

Popularity: 34% [?]

August 28th, 2008 | Mark | 1 comment | Continued
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Seminary Syllabus Strategy #3: A Writing Plan for Every Major Paper

Seminary will give you plenty of practice writing papers. By the time I graduated with my M.Div, I could easily write ten pages about nothing. (Some would allege that my sermons are exactly that…but I digress.)
Writing papers on the scale that seminary requires can be daunting if you haven’t done it before. [...]

Popularity: 30% [?]

August 27th, 2008 | Mark | 3 comments | Continued
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Seminary Syllabus Strategy #2: Start Reading Now

Seminary involves a LOT of reading. At the beginning of the semester, you typically have more open time. Seize it! Use it to read ahead now, and then when the first wave of papers is due, you won’t be so rushed.
There may be some classes you can read ahead in more easily.
Look [...]

Popularity: 27% [?]

August 26th, 2008 | Mark | 2 comments | Continued
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Seminary Syllabus Strategy #1: Get It In Your Calendar

The first week of seminary is over, and looming ahead are due dates for reading, papers and tests. You know this because you should have a syllabus for each class, which contains all the assignments you’ll need to complete this semester and their due dates.
This is awesome. It’s a time management bonanza. [...]

Popularity: 29% [?]

August 25th, 2008 | Mark | 2 comments | Continued
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Master Your Seminary’s Required Reading in Half the Time (or Less)

Seminary requires a massive amount of reading. Often the workload for even a single course can go over a thousand pages. Multiply that by four or five, and it becomes daunting, especially if you’re not a natural reader. The numbers of people who struggle with reading seems to be growing, and I’m [...]

Popularity: 26% [?]

August 11th, 2008 | Mark | 11 comments | Continued
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Writing Learning Objectives for Your Seminary Experience

I worked four years in a church staff position during and after college before deciding I needed to further my education by going to seminary. Those years were invaluable to my development, because I experienced ministry and discovered what I didn’t know and needed to learn before starting my studies. I wish [...]

Popularity: 22% [?]

May 5th, 2008 | Daryl Eldridge | 1 comment | Continued
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Using Mentors in Seminary

Having a learning coach or ministry mentor is a great way to leverage your seminary experience.
Our research on theological education as well as surveys with people in the field led us to make mentoring a significant part of our learning model. Many seminaries will involve mentoring during the last two semesters of their study [...]

Popularity: 29% [?]

April 28th, 2008 | Daryl Eldridge | 5 comments | Continued
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Lessons Learned about Online Learning

Five years ago, I left a residential seminary campus to start a fully online seminary from scratch, known today as Rockbridge. In my travels and discussions with ministers around the world, I discovered many ministers that wanted seminary training but didn’t feel called to leave their ministry fields in order to get it.
Technology [...]

Popularity: 24% [?]

April 21st, 2008 | Daryl Eldridge | 1 comment | Continued
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