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Distinctives of the Internet Biblical Seminary

Because a number of missions, Bible colleges, and seminaries are now developing distance learning programs for use on the Internet, it is helpful to explain what is unique about the Internet Biblical Seminary (IBS) approach to this new technology. The items below reflect, as far as we know (as of January 2005), unique features of the IBS which are not incorporated in totality in any other distance learning effort.

  1. IBS emerges out of an existing on-the-field ministry involving over 18,000 students in more than 10 countries. In other words, it is linked with a current team of facilitators and students who are already involved in training all around the world. This guarantees not only that the courses will be used but also gives IBS a network which can multiply to many thousands. Thus IBS courses are in use now, and not sometime in the future.
  2. The IBS training is linked directly with an itinerant team of over 50 facilitators who travel to the target countries to conduct seminars on how the material the students have studied relates to their practical lives and ministries. This is not a correspondence course or a distance learning course run by a foreign "expert"; it is conducted live with personal interactive mentoring.
  3. The IBS courses are designed in such a way as to be completely self-contained and transferable content-wise. The goal of a student who completes an IBS course is to teach the same course to others. Our desire is to trigger multiplication chains. Much time is spent training the students in the existing groups how to facilitate. Most other distance learning initiatives are directly linked to the Bible school or western expert. The course cannot be transferred and multiplied to others because a major part of it depends upon papers, exams, and emails from the western professor or expert.
  4. IBS is linked to a ministry that has over 25 years of experience teaching distance education courses on paper in many cultures. It is not a theoretical idea for the future but is happening extensively right now.
  5. An IBS course is designed to be deliverable on four platforms: paper, CD, computer hard drive (download), and the Internet. Because paper is the primary medium and will be for the next several years, it is important that the same course available on the Web or CD be available in a print version (minus the multimedia and computer interaction). In this way, a student can take the course on the Web, on CD, or by downloading it. As an example of the latter, the student could download and study Lesson 1 of a course himself and also print 10 copies to take to his group members who lack computers.
  6. IBS has developed a technology which makes it very easy to translate highly technical multimedia courses into any language. Called Word2Web, this program takes a "tagged" Word document and with a few button clicks transforms it into an interactive multimedia course completely formatted and ready for the Internet. Because the only "technology" a translator needs to know is how to use Microsoft Word, we can send a course to him and he can translate directly in the Word document between the "tags." Then, with a few clicks, the entire course is on the Internet in a multimedia interactive form in that language.
  7. IBS has developed the technology which enables us to translate the course in double-byte or right-to-left languages. This emerges out of point 6 above. We can then, with one Web site and one server, display the same course in any language. No one else, to our knowledge, has yet developed this technology.
  8. IBS is totally focused on the mission world and hence getting the materials into the languages of the nationals. Many Bible school and seminary programs, however, are in English.
  9. The curriculum is designed from beginning to end to ensure that the students taking the courses are not only trained to teach others, but are able to set up their own indigenous training systems. Furthermore, the students are trained how to write their own courses, which can be delivered via paper, CD, the hard drive, or the Web in their own languages.
  10. The technology, the Web site, and the course development approach are designed so as to be transferable to other missions and to nationals. We are not simply teaching a course over the Web like some Bible schools do; we are transferring an entire system for nationals to use in producing their own courses. Furthermore, the Word2Web technology makes it easy for course writers in other missions or indigenous Bible schools to write their own courses and, without in-depth knowledge of the technology, quickly convert them to the Internet in any language. This facilitates the spread of many courses among many missions.
  11. The IBS curriculum is not being created from scratch. It is a curriculum based upon many courses which exist now. Furthermore, these courses have been used in ministry for over 20 years. We begin, then, with a field-tested curriculum which has weathered many cultures.
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