This study examines the impact of AI course assistants on student learning experiences in online undergraduate courses at Los Angeles Pacific University. A controlled experiment involving 92 students across treatment and control groups was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of AI assistants developed by Nectir. The treatment group had access…

This article focuses on Reflective Structured Dialogue as a set of practices developed in the context of conflict resolution that are well suited to handling quotidian uneasiness and extraordinary moments of disruption in religious studies classrooms. After introducing Reflective Structured Dialogue's history, goals, and general practices, the…

This article evaluates the design, delivery, and main outcomes of Cardiff University's first "Massive Open Online Course" (MOOC) entitled "Muslims in Britain: Changes and Challenges," delivered to over 20,899 international learners between 2014 and 2019. I explore the design principles underpinning the course and offer a…

This practitioner's note integrates reflections from a year of graduate coursework in the International Training and Education Program in the School of Education at American University (AU), and the role of intergroup dialogue facilitator at the Intergroup Dialogue Program on Islamophobia at the Center for Diversity and Inclusion during the fall,…

Interfaith initiatives are seen as promising sites for societal change and personal transformation. However, many questions about the actual outcomes of such initiatives have remained unanswered. Therefore, a systematic review was conducted, focusing on 1) the outcomes of interfaith initiatives and 2) the methods used to evaluate these outcomes.…

Students increasingly appear anxious, risk-averse, and worried about getting things "wrong." They may appear to lack intellectual curiosity, and be unwilling to engage in independent study. This essay explores how teaching and assessment in theology and religious studies might help students learn to take intellectual risks, and increase…

This school-based study explored the role of collective and proxy efficacy beliefs in the performances of project-based learning teams comprising friends and acquaintances. Participants were 162 male students in Grade 8 who attended a Catholic high school, located in Sydney, Australia. Students were organized into 20 acquaintance groups and 21…

Building on various models for "intercultural and interreligious competence" (IC/IR competence), this essay argues that classroom learning about religious and cultural diversity will engage students' "sociological imaginations" and lead to increased IC/IR competence. The current strategy for increasing intercultural competence…

This article describes a pedagogical response to teaching world religions courses in a post-truth age. The course assignment and its application, utilized in both online and in-person formats, bridge student academic pursuits with religious traditions, require students to engage with source-based journalism, and extend beyond the classroom into…

While peer-assisted (PAL) learning strategies have been successful in K-12 programs, such practices are used less commonly at the college level. In addition, PAL programs are aimed largely at student populations who are struggling (for example, learning disabled students) or in topics where many students encounter difficulty (for example, math and…

One of the most illuminating finds in Barbara E. Walvoord's "Teaching and Learning in College Introductory Religion Courses" (2008) is what she calls "the great divide," a mismatch between instructors' goals for their courses, which are academic, and the students' reasons for taking them, which relate to their personal…

Site visits provide an irreplaceable learning experience to students in both religious studies and the emerging field of interfaith studies. The conceptual core of this thesis is the claim, drawn from feminist epistemology, that an embodied pedagogy--a pedagogy which engages students not only intellectually, but as embodied beings who inhabit a…

What is it that makes a student's answer correct or incorrect in Religious Studies? In practice, the standards of correctness in the Religious Studies classroom are generally applied with relative ease by teachers and students. Nevertheless, they are problematic. We shall argue that correctness does not come from either the students or the teacher…

The majority of this essay describes the content, pedagogy, and assessments associated with an undergraduate, interdisciplinary honors seminar on science and religion. The seminar is structured around five major themes: (a) philosophy of science, religion, and their interactions, (b) historical and contemporary case studies, (c) the controversy…

Sexuality, more so than other subject areas, magnifies the embodied nature of teaching and learning as well as conspicuously silences open dialogue given its taboo status in many religious and theological contexts. Yet, student learning about sexuality that incorporates knowledge of and about religion, in particular, may greatly improve the public…