Future scholarship- for students

This post is the second of the insights from thefutureofthebook project. The post is based on renewed publics, revised pedagogies- Anvi Santos.

It is one thing to be overwhelmed by such abundant knowledge that new scholarship provide and enables research by biblical students/students from other fields, but another thing to be able to determine the creibility fo the information.

There are a vairety of bible study blogs and biblical studies related blogs, but how do we determine quality? Fulfiling the intentions of Socrates that "the role of the intellectual is to bring the fire of knowledge closer to the people and therefore enriching their lives instead of having it locked up in the Ivory Tower in an autistic discourse among academics" is not without a challenge.

Santos argues that the new technology offers ways of pedagogies and community intervention. this include;

"the development, drafting and revision of critical writing would
happen in public before scholarly work is put through the traditional
blind "peer-review" process- this gives the students the opportunity to see,
learn and participate in the process other than only being
presented with finished works to digest."

but the students would not be able to participate without the approparite tools. by this I mean "critical digital literacy skills" to write and research in this enviroment as "creators, critics, analysts, activists, or consumers".

insitutions as well as individuals are beginning to take up this challenge. Courses on digital media are being introduced among others within the field of biblical studies. Glad to note that i'm currently taking a course on "Bible in electronic context" to be able to critically participate in the new scholarship. almost half way through the course, i have learnt;

• variuos components of hypertext resources, such that i can participate in a discussion as well as set up my own resource for learning purposes including researching.
• members of the class are also able to dialogue with each other and engage in critical conversations as we learn to critically participate in a digital environment through our blogs. the conversation helps us to "see the connections between individual experiences and larger social, cultural, political, economic, and/or technological processes." other members of the community are also welcomed to participate to complement the already cross-cultural class.
• the students are in the process of setting up hypertext resources for biblical studies as part of our course work assessment.

All these aimed at increasing our knowledge and participation in the new scholarship especially being able to "judge online resources critically and incorporate these materials into their research in ways that go beyond merely cutting and pasting text." Our lecturer remains the expert as he assess our created resources.