After purchasing Thinking Strings’ Revealing World Religions and accessing the course Blackboard website (see column to the left), students will be set to embark on a whirlwind tour of the world’s religious traditions.

Throughout the semester, an instructor will be present in Blackboard to   help facilitate student progress through the course by providing feedback on assignments, answering questions on course content and procedure, and participating in the discussion boards.  This is not a correspondence course but rather a fully-integrated learning environment.  All sections of REL 243 online will be relatively similar and will follow the general structure outlined below; that said, the Religious Studies Department provides online instructors the right to modify the curriculum.

The class is divided into seven learning modules:

1. •Exploring Religion
   

2. •Hinduism
   

3. •Buddhism
   

4. •Taoism
   

5. •Judaism
   

6. •Christianity
   

7. •Islam
   

8. 
   

For each learning unit, students will peruse relevant content on the DVD-ROM, take a quiz, and complete an interactive exercise (see the two bulleted points below).

1. •Navigate through the Revealing World Religions v.3.2 content provided on the Thinking Strings DVD-ROM.  As students explore the content for a given module (Hinduism, for example), the software will track progress through an achievement profile.  After exploring each page (for example,  listening to a sound clip, reading selected passages from a sacred text, or finishing a simple, interactive exercise), a “gold star” is awarded to show that the page has been completed.  The goal is to complete all the pages in the module in order to earn a “gold star” for the entire module (which will display on the students’ main achievement profile page).  In essence, this is equivalent to reading the assigned chapter in a textbook - but in a much more fun and engaging manner!  And, yes, you will be awarded participation credit for completing each Thinking Strings module.
   

1. •Once the “reading” for the learning module has been completed, students will engage in two activities to reinforce/enhance learning from Thinking Strings.  First, students will take a timed, open book / open note quiz.  Second, students will be asked to complete a more interactive activity, such as responding to a discussion board prompt, participating in a blog activity, or evaluating a web/media resource.  Assigned interactive exercises for each unit will be customized by the instructor.
   

2. 
   

3. In addition to the items listed above (“reading” the module, posting to the discussion board, and taking the quiz), students will have two other major tasks.   These include:
   

4. •a capstone project to be determined by the instructor.  Past capstone projects have included a site visit presentation (in which students, being mindful of their own world views and attitudes about religion, visit a religious institution (other than their own) and report their findings in a PowerPoint presentation), a draft interfaith magazine, a fictional dialog between characters from a different religion, etc.
   

5. •an online, open-book final exam that will contain questions related to content mastered throughout the semester.