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The Transform your Teaching podcast is a service of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio. Join Dr. Rob McDole and Dr. Jared Pyles as they seek to inspire higher education faculty to adopt innovative teaching and learning practices.
I mean, the knowledge is in our pockets nowadays. That's not going to be the expertise anymore from the faculty as I see it, but it's going to be how to facilitate this process of equipping people with skills for the job.
Narrator:This is the Transform Your Teaching podcast. The Transform Your Teaching podcast is a service of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio.
Jared:Welcome back to the Transform Your Teaching podcast. My name is Jared Pyles, and with me is Dr. Rob McDole. We are doing one of our faculty conversations that we do every now and then. And this time we're honored to have president of Veritas College, Doctor.
Jared:Benny Wolvaardt, all the way from Australia.
Rob:Perth, Australia.
Jared:Perth, Australia, which is we've gone international.
Rob:Yeah. So it's 10:00 our time right now. Correct. And it's 10:00 his time as well. But it's AM here and PM there.
Jared:The opposite side. Yeah.
Rob:He's getting ready to go to go to bed soon, I think. So we really appreciate you coming on the show, Benny, and we're just coming to you wanting to ask some questions about competency based education, what you're doing with it. But before we get to it, just give us an idea of how you got into becoming the president of Veritas, you know, maybe a quick little bio on how you got into theological education, if you will.
Dr. Wolvaardt:Yes, good morning. It's really great to be with you today, shall I say this morning. I was born in South Africa and grew up there. Just a bit of the background, in my final year at school, I received a very unexpected and very direct calling to go into ministry, and then the theological education I had to follow. In those days, seven years university training before I could be ordained, and then while in my first congregation, and only congregation in South Africa, completed the equivalent of a PhD.
Dr. Wolvaardt:And my wife and myself, with our four small sons, migrated to The UK, just North of London, in 1987, and a bit further to the geography in 2005. We migrated to Australia, living in Perth, and that's Southwest Australia. So that's a bit of that background.
Rob:So you've done a lot of traveling, it seems.
Dr. Wolvaardt:A bit around the block, as as they would say.
Rob:So tell us a little bit about Veritas and your particular approach to competency based education there.
Dr. Wolvaardt:Perhaps a bit of history. While we were in The UK in 1992, we founded Veritas there as a UK institution. Later also in The US as an institution, Australia, South Africa, that's where Tusk College International, these four countries. But a bit, why did we start? I saw tremendous need in Eastern Europe, specifically Romania, after the Iron Curtain came rusting down.
Dr. Wolvaardt:And so we started training there in 1993. Non formal education with competency based, the basis certainly as the educational philosophy, and training church leaders a tremendous training need at that time to interpret the Bible using semantic discourse analysis, interpreting the different types of literature, how to interpret, how to apply it in their local context, and how to administer it, and that Bible interpretation was actually applied to all the different Bible books. So it was again, it was right from that beginning competency based education that we started it. Since then, that non formal trading has grown. We work nowadays in 52 countries, 40 languages, And the last year that was 2002, 2003, we had around 25,000 people in training.
Dr. Wolvaardt:That's on a non formal level.
Jared:I want to stop you there because I have to ask, you mentioned competency based in the early nineties. Obviously now, CBE is a very popular model because of the modality of online education. What was it like to do CBE in the nineties? Like, did you guys do the the VHS tapes sent back and forth? Or how did that look as far as, you know, getting stuff done at your own pace and waiting on an educator to assess it and stuff like that?
Dr. Wolvaardt:Yeah, this is interesting, this thing at your own pace. I personally do not see that as a necessity for competency based education. We do all our training in classes, cohorts, face to face, non formal especially training. We've got a transferable curriculum. Training facilitators, they train others, and they do it face to face.
Dr. Wolvaardt:Some of it we will do actually online, and then we will do it by direct synchronous online learning. Non formal, our formal education, and that's in 2006. We started with that in Australia. You would say to me, Why Australia? If I could take the history a bit further, and I think that will give a bit of explanation where we find ourselves, it's realized in the missionary world that there's a tremendous need for theological training.
Dr. Wolvaardt:In evangelical circles, they're talking about 2,000,000 people preaching without adequate theological education. But many of them haven't got a high school graduation. They can't enroll in a traditional accredited program. Australia has got a system by which you can start without high school, you can start with training. That's where we developed a certificate IV in the vocational sector here, a diploma, advanced diploma, and a graduate diploma.
Dr. Wolvaardt:And that's also taught in the field. Most of our uptake there is actually in Northern Africa and The Middle East, the Arabic world. And then we do recognition of prior learning of that here in Perth. And then the question remained, what about further education? What about your graduate education?
Dr. Wolvaardt:And we really searched around the world, and we say, Where can we get accreditation for competency based education on that level? We already had an institution in The US that we started founded there in, I think, 2001, 2002. Then we realized the only place that is into innovation in this regard is The US. And we started with our graduate school there in 2012, with our first training in Egypt, again face to face in Arabic. We received our accreditation in 2023 from ABHE, and that was completely as competency based theological education programs, MDIF up to doctorate, up to Ph.D., actually accredited.
Dr. Wolvaardt:And that was the nice thing about it. We received it without any action steps required.
Rob:Wow. That's significant.
Jared:Yeah, for sure.
Rob:So just truth in advertising so our listeners know how in the world did we find Dr. Wolvaardt? Well, my connections with ABHE led me to you, A dear mentor and and former boss, Dr. Ron Kroll, was the one who said, I needed to talk to you because you had so much experience with competency based education. And I think we can we can vouch for that now having heard how long he's been doing it. Yeah. So one of the things that we've talked to different folks about when we've interviewed them on competency based education is tell us some success stories.
Rob:Because I've got to believe in the twenty, thirty years you've been doing this, that you've got some success stories.
Dr. Wolvaardt:I think in the end, people vote with their feet. And that's what we have experienced, the non-formal , also the diploma, and now we are starting to gear up since we've received accreditation with our graduate education. And well, stories very specifically. Which country? Perhaps Syria?
Dr. Wolvaardt:Should we talk about Syria? Old church? When my ancestors were still Bavarians there in the northern parts of Europe, these people were already Christians, if you just think of how old Christianity is in that part of the world. So old churches. There's a US foundation, a funding foundation, that reckons Veritas is at the moment the biggest provider of theological education in Syria.
Dr. Wolvaardt:Having used the word theological, we actually train people from a spectrum of churches, from the foundation to the diploma to the graduate education. We graduated end class, of class, last week in Lebanon. Our academic dean was able to attend there, and one of our staff members from Egypt. But the fascinating thing is with the spectrum of graduates, from Catholic all the way to Pentecostal, and literally everything in between, Syrian Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, called Greek Orthodox because they used Greek as the Roman church would use Latin. And again, so that's just a tremendous encouragement for us.
Dr. Wolvaardt:And it is possible because it's competency based. Work together, you do analysis, you do semantic discourse analysis of the biblical text. You arrive at the message for the regional receivers. Then you discuss together what are the absolutes for our time. And each student needs to apply it in their own context, own ministry context, their own church tradition, and that's also where they minister in their own church tradition.
Dr. Wolvaardt:And that's why we can see a unity, and that's why we can see a spectrum of churches around the world using our training. Our focus is on helping the church to train their own people and equipping them with competencies that they can use in their own context.
Jared:You've mentioned several times now something that I haven't heard from a lot of the, CBE experts we've had on. And I mentioned earlier the go at your own pace part of, CBE. You've mentioned several times a sense of collaboration that you have with your cohorts. And that's different from what I've heard where it's more you're at your own pace, you can finish at your own pace, you can test out of courses or parts of modules of courses, but it sounds like you are encouraging cohorts and groups to finish close to the same time, or at least in that area.
Dr. Wolvaardt:Yes, we do that. We find it's very helpful. It helps with the mentoring. And then when you do it with the students, and when you do it in a cohort, they actually learn from one another. And they also learn to work together with others.
Dr. Wolvaardt:And there's a time limit that we put on it, the assignments. It's a certain discipline that we require industry, if I may use the term industry, referring to the church, but wider, requires that from people. If you do a job, if you're a pastor, you've got a time limit. Now you need to decide yourself beforehand, do you want to study with these people or don't you want to study with them? Also the other requirement is we only enroll people in our graduate education who've already done our non formal education, then they've got a good idea what their training is about.
Dr. Wolvaardt:So we've got a very low dropout rate, because they could have made up their minds that they really want. This type of training is the training that they would like to do.
Rob:Wow. So what's that collaboration look like? I know that's one of the things that Jared and I have wrestled with. He's pushed me on it because I'm more of a fan of CBE than than most. But, you know, our focus and my wife's experience and my experience has been that kind of like you're you're out there on your own.
Rob:You're pushing through the content on your own. You may have a mentor that connects with you every week, but you are kind of siloed and there's not a a connection with others in terms of where they might be in the same in the same sphere
Dr. Wolvaardt:Mhmm.
Rob:Of something that you're studying. So how do you accomplish that when you have folks coming in maybe at different levels in terms of their understanding of the context? What does that look like?
Dr. Wolvaardt:Well, if you look at exegetical site, for example, we will do a structural analysis of Ephesians. So they do it I don't want an essay, I don't want the opinions of other commentaries in the first place. So they first need to do the analysis themselves, and then they can go check the commentaries. It's not about working with the secondary sources. The Bible is a primary source, so they need to be able to analyze that.
Dr. Wolvaardt:It's a piece of literature, obviously inspired by the Holy Spirit, but it's still literature. Written in a certain type of discourse, in a certain genre, they need to interpret it accordingly. To go to that practical class, we'll ask them, "Please show us the structure." They need to hand it in beforehand, that we can check it, so it is also a flipped classroom situation. If they haven't done that, then we would excuse them from that class.
Dr. Wolvaardt:We will record it after they've uploaded it. So then they can watch that and be willing to. Each and every case, they come into the class and then they will show their structure. We will ask a few of them to show and it will be discussed. Usually in a case like that, the faculty will start off and say, Okay, this is the structure that I felt.
Dr. Wolvaardt:And questions and explain why. Because this is competency. We are together developing competencies. I mean, the faculty doesn't have all the competencies, especially when it comes to scripture. Actually anything we do, we're together in this.
Dr. Wolvaardt:So that's where the cohort is so very, very important in the learning experience. If we go into something else, now we've got a process. We want to talk about teaching people how to do theology themselves. And what do we mean? To be able to interpret scripture in-depth.
Dr. Wolvaardt:To be able to interpret their local context in-depth. That's again for me a primary source. Scripture is a primary source, and local context is a primary source. The interaction between the two of them, and then how to minister in your own context. So that's the process that we take them through constantly.
Dr. Wolvaardt:So it's very much an integrated process. You have picked it up. Lot has been written, especially in The US, about the importance of integrating the different theological disciplines. Now we integrate it in this process of doing theology. Let's go to then the issue of ethics.
Dr. Wolvaardt:This will be a class, say, in Egypt, and people say, Identify ethical issues in your context. They come up with issues that we would never ever have thought about from a Western context. And then we say, Okay, in your context, what are the biblical absolutes that should be applied to this issue, and then teaching them the skill of making an ethical decision. And then from there say, Okay, what's the solution? And then how will you administer this year of contact?
Dr. Wolvaardt:And that's what they will present to class, again coming to the cohort. They learn from one another. We as faculty learn from them. So it's a fantastic learning experience together in class. The faculty, obviously, they need to be well equipped, but not well equipped in the sense of giving all the knowledge.
Dr. Wolvaardt:I mean the knowledge is in our pockets nowadays. And with AI becoming so generally available, that's not going to be the expertise anymore from the faculty as I see it, but it's going to be how to facilitate this process of equipping people with skills for the job.
Rob:Well, this has been wonderful.
Jared:For sure.
Rob:Your experience and your expertise shows itself, and I I appreciate you taking the time to have this conversation with us. But I'd like to switch a little bit here and and now ask you about the challenges that you face. What are the challenges for someone who's looking to get into this model of education? Where do you start?
Dr. Wolvaardt:In traditional education, I think you've mentioned this in one of your podcasts, the backwards design. That's the same thing here. But the backwards design here is very, very much important. It's the consulting of industry, industry consulting. In competency based theological education, that will be ministries and that will be churches.
Dr. Wolvaardt:It's interesting in Australia, when you have your programs, you have to be registered as a training organization, and each program has to be accredited with all its elements of competency and performance criteria. And one of the requirements is you need to prove that you have done proper industry consultation. What are the needs out there in the church? What do they need? You need to have very clear clarity about that.
Dr. Wolvaardt:And then you say, Okay, are the needs, and I'm training for those needs, starting at the endpoint. And then say, Okay, do I define the competencies that these people who are going to work in church or in industry need to have. It's important to define those well. It shouldn't just be knowledge that you try to put into a competency formulation. You really need to think what are the competencies.
Dr. Wolvaardt:For example, I had one conference, or I was a speaker at one conference, and they said to me, Well, the world changes all the time. Does it mean you're going to change your curriculum? I said, No, you need to think about the competencies that people will need to have in industry. For example, they need to be able to analyze their own context in ministry. They need to be able to apply the biblical absolutes you can pick up my theological position when I speak about absolutes to that specific context.
Dr. Wolvaardt:And they need to be able to design a mode of ministry or how to minister. So if you do that, then their context can change. You can also work with different churches, different types of churches. Generations are changing very quickly. You can say, "Well, this is a new generation."
Dr. Wolvaardt:I've got the skills to analyze them. I've got the skills to analyze this church in which I'm working. And I've spoken a bit more about theological education. Obviously competency based education could be applied to any subject.
Rob:So it sounds like he's the model that they've landed on is analysis and synthesis, followed through with some sort of action, and I'm assuming, a verification, obviously, of of that action. How do you, I guess you train your faculty the same way you're training your students?
Dr. Wolvaardt:Yeah, your faculty need to buy into this. All you need, us to be a new institution, we could recruit faculty that really, if we report into this, that is motivated. We're now in a privileged position of having trained some of our own faculty. We've got two people who've just completed their doctorates of ministry. One lady already had a PhD in education, and now she's got a demon.
Dr. Wolvaardt:She's obviously very valuable to us, with all the other faculty. So all our faculty have really bought into this. And once you've formulated the competencies, then if I may speak a bit about designing your assessment instruments. And I think that's a very, very important element of your assessment instruments because they need to map your competencies. You need to be able to map them and then the criterion referenced assessment that is used in competency based education.
Dr. Wolvaardt:People need to provide evidence of competency, all the elements on the performance criteria of competency, so that you know that person has got the competencies. And how do they formulate this criteria in reference? They say it's a process of evaluating the learning of students against a set of pre specified qualities or criteria without reference to the achievement of others. So they know right at the beginning what evidence, or evidence of what competencies, they need to provide.
Jared:Maybe just to reaffirm with the cohort idea, what you just said, the individual assesses at the end. So you've got, you mentioned in your, what you just, the definition was the assessment is individualized. But what's great, and I think this is one of the coolest things I've heard about using a competency based in this way, is that you're using those in the cohort to learn from each other say those high achieving students are helping and serving the low achieving students and bringing them up to their level, which I think is incredible.
Dr. Wolvaardt:Yes, that is certainly the case. Is certainly the case. With that, repetition is very important in this process. And then obviously, again, you do a passage, you assess it together, discuss it, you do the next passage, you do it again. Then that learning from one another is for us in our competency based education is absolutely
Jared:Yeah. That's great.
Rob:That sounds like a real short feedback loop. Do it. Assess it. Do it again. Assess it.
Rob:Do it again till you get to that level of of mastery.
Dr. Wolvaardt:Mhmm. And only at that end, you do your final assessment. Mhmm. You don't add up and divide. You help the person through the mentoring process, then you do the assessment.
Jared:And really that final assessment is not necessarily you already know what the outcome is of the final assessment. It's more of a confirmation of the work you've done along the way, which is what a true summative assessment should be anyway, is that in peace.
Rob:What about some resources? Where can we go? You know, what were some foundational resources that you used or or maybe even still use? You know, we've talked about Wiggins and McTee backwards design here. We've used other kinds of things.
Rob:Are there resources that have led you down this path or things that you think are foundational?
Dr. Wolvaardt:In Australia, even the fact that I've got a PhD, they do not allow you to run competency based education without having done a very specific course in competency based education. It's a Cert IV, but it's a very intensive course. So we all had to jump that loop, and then from time to time they add another competency unit, another course, that we need to update, And then they require from us also fairly frequently to do additional courses that they provide professional development. So I need to give recognition to the Australians for for just being excellent in competency based education. And that's why we actually relocated here originally.
Jared:Okay. Well, thank you again for your time. We do appreciate it. And, yeah, I hope you have a good evening, a good rest. Thanks so much for helping us out, and we hope to talk to you again soon.
Rob:It's been an honor.
Jared:It has definitely been an honor.
Dr. Wolvaardt:Thank you very much. It was really great to talk to you.
Jared:That's gonna do it for us today on the Transformer Teaching Podcast. Be sure to like and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. If you have any questions, send us an email at ctlpodcastcedarville.edu and check out our blog at cedarville.edu/focusblog. Thanks for listening.