Enaging Ministry Models from Higher Education, Part 1: Sleeping Through Class

You’re a college student. You’ve got five classes, a membership in a frat, work 15 – 20 hours a week, and are dating a cute girl in the sorority across campus. You study when you can; you sleep even less.

So when it comes down to going to class, you have to make some choices: get an extra hour or two of sleep, or go to class. If you’re keeping things decently in balance, you skip one or two classes a week. No big deal. You’ve got 9 more class hours you actually are there.

So which ones do you pick? Which ones do you attend, which ones do you skip? It all comes down to involvement. If your class is one of those big, lecture-type classes, you’re more likely to skip it. Large lecture classes involve a lot of passivity on the part of students. Just sitting and listening doesn’t engage people enough to make class seem worthwhile. Moreover, the professor (who probably doesn’t even grade your work, that’s done by assistants) doesn’t even know who you are nor does he care.

To combat passivity, lecture-style classes feature discussion sections of (typically) under 20 students (most are 8 – 15) where quizzes are administered and discussion of material by students is the main content. In the end, though, even this is not enough to get students out of bed to go to lecture on the average day. Now, the day prior to the big test, well, that’s a different story.

No, students who have to prioritize time for going to class and determine which ones to skip base their decisions on how engaging the class is. Three types of classes regularly get the best reviews by the students in the end-of-semester class evaluations: interactive/participatory/laboratory classes, smaller classes, and classes that engage more of the senses than just aural – especially those that make judicious use of the visual.

Why do students choose to return to these classes, even when they would skip a lecture class at a later time on a different day? One word: engagement. These classes offer students the ability to actively engage with the material, rather than passively receiving the information. Smaller classes invite participation only if they are not still lecture-style classes. Smaller classes usually invite students to give input, to present topics (effectively co-teaching the class, and thus learning the material much more deeply than if they just learn it enough to take the test), to ask questions, and most of all to know – and be known to – the professor.

Participatory classes engage students in a different way: the class (basically) doesn’t happen if they don’t involve themselves in it. These classes only work if the participation is “cool” – most people don’t want to do the corny, stupid human tricks sorts of things that embarrass them. Laboratory classes do well in this regard: if the student doesn’t come to class, he/she is not going to get the data anywhere else, unless he/she knows the theories well enough to fabricate it accurately (in which case why the class?).

Classes that stimulate the senses other than the ears and the nerves in the gluteus maximus also continue to get students out of bed. The use of visual items: symbols, photos, clips of film/moving diagrams/computer models, etc., engage students’ understanding of the subject. With increased understanding comes increased engagement (it’s not going over their head so they stay interested). Often, this visual experience is initiated by the use of technological resources: laptops, projectors, the Internet, etc. However, it is when this is done well that it actually engages most students. Most students put up with a certain amount of “cheeze” knowing that the professor is a socially-awkward nerd and that their is some marginal level of humor in the amateurish graphics. But really, quality engages here.

To summarize: why do sleepy, busy students go to some classes more readily than others? Engagement. Participation. Relationship. Use of their whole person to engage the subject, not just their ears and their glutes.

These are not just students being lazy or over-busy. These are sociological phenomena that can be seen in operation in many other areas of life. In fact, there are many strong parallels between student life and our approach to “doing church.” I will take up these correlations in Engaging Ministry Models from Higher Education, Part 2: Sleeping Through Worship