Welcome everybody, welcome to the Future Trans Forum. My name is Brian Alexander. I'm your host, I'm the cat herder and I'm the creator of this program. It'll run for the next hour. And this is a conversation based venue for exploring the future of education. I'm delighted to see so many of you here today. We have two fantastic guests with a great project to share. I'm absolutely delighted to welcome to really, really important writers and thinkers and provocateurs from the University of Edinburgh. First of all, I'd like to welcome Sean Bain and she's coming to us as a professor of I believe digital education and she has an awful lot to share. Hello. Hello, hi Brian, hi everybody. Good to see you, good to see you. What time is it here in Scotland? It's about 10 past seven in the evening. Beautiful evening in Edinburgh, so I'm streaming in. And I know how precious that sun can be. Yeah. Well, I'm so glad to see you, I'm so glad to see you. You know, there are a lot of ways for academics to be introduced and I find my favorite way is to ask you what you're gonna be working on for the next year. What are the big topics or the big projects that are uppermost in your mind? I think at the moment, doing a lot of thinking around the future of higher education, teaching post COVID. So I think all the kind of, well, most of the talk invitations I'm getting are people saying, what's gonna happen? What have we learned from the last year and what can we take forward into the future and what's that gonna mean for the shape of our universities and for the way we think about teaching and the way we think about our students. So I think there's a lot of futuring work going on at the moment. And I think it's a great opportunity for Jen and I and our co-authors of the manifesto book to kind of start to mobilize some of the thinking in the book to actually map what's coming next. So I think that's gonna be something we want to do. We also want to do a 2021-2022 version of the manifesto for teaching online, but maybe we can talk more about that later. We will, we will indeed. That sounds great. Are you gonna be teaching this fall? PhDs at the moment. So at the moment, most of my teaching is sort of development and leadership. So we're setting up a brand new institute in Edinburgh called the Edinburgh Futures Institute, which we're putting a large, a really big program of undergraduate and postgraduate education programs kind of into play. So what I'm doing at the moment, or most of my teaching time is around directing that piece of work and leading it and trying to understand what a really forward-looking, exciting kind of interdisciplinary curriculum can look like for a futures institute with quite big ambitions. So that's what I'll be doing in the teaching sphere over the next year. That sounds fantastic. Well, hold on one second. Let me just add to our deck one of Sean's colleagues. This is Jen Ross, also from the University of Edinburgh, and let me bring her up on the screen. Hello, Jen. Hello. How are you doing? I'm very well, thank you. I'm not on the sunny side of my house. Oh, no, no, it's cloudy. It's the dour and lowering side. Oh, I see. Well, let me ask you, Jen, what are you going to be working on for the next year? One of the big projects I have on the go at the moment is a book, actually, which is trying to pull together some of the work that I've done with Sean and other colleagues over the last 10 years or so, developing and implementing and using speculative methods for digital education research and also for digital education teaching. So I am in the midst of writing that now and it is taking up a lot of my head space, but in a good way. And I'm just, yeah, really excited to think about some of your issues today with everybody. Well, that sounds like a fantastic book. I would love to hear more about that later on. Well, I would love to talk about it. Oh, good, good.  Well, friends, if, well, first of all, welcome both to Jen and Sean. You two are here to talk about a great project you've worked on along with other folks and this goes back somehow 10 years. So in 2011, you two helped put out Manifesto for Teaching Online. In 2016, you revised it to add even more stuff and to, well, we'll learn more why. And then just this year, you're publishing it in book form. So it's kind of the third edition of this. Along the way, there'd be videos, there'd be PDF versions. And now Sean has already been hinting at us that there may be a next post-COVID edition of this. So if you're new to the Manifesto, in the bottom left corner of your screen, you should see a big kind of tan or mustard colored button. And if you click that, it'll take you, they might be pressed site so you can, you know, grab a copy for yourself. Grab two for the trend as well. But there's so much in that and the Manifesto is so brilliant at getting people to think more interestingly and with more nuance about teaching online. And I have questions at every point of it. The first thing I just wanted to ask to start off with was, how has it changed over 10 years? How is your thinking about all of this change? I can see some of the added points and a few word choice changes, but tell us more about how this has changed as it's sailed to the sea of years from 10 years ago. Do you want to go first, John, or shall I? You go first, John. Okay. Yeah, it's funny because I was thinking about that exact same question just before we came online and I was looking back again at the 2011 Manifesto. And some of it just seemed really quite old fashioned now. There was a big focus on what I2I might mean in the context of an internet that wasn't generally kind of high bandwidth. It was before we'd had this kind of FaceTime revolution, if you like, in digital education, but at that time, most of our online teaching was in text-based discussion forums and things like that. So I think that was a big shift from 2011 to the 2016 edition where we would, so in 2011, we were trying to sort of make the case for how rich digital education could be without necessarily having to be dependent and reliant on FaceTime.  And suddenly we were writing about quite a different internet, a much more high bandwidth experience, much more video-oriented experience. So I think there would be big technological changes and since 2016, there have been even more. But we can talk about those later. The technology is huge. Yeah, the technology development is immense. Ja, what would you say? I think there's been, in the time since the first manifesto, a real shift in the kinds of conversations that go on about digital education amongst educators in general. So there are always people having the kinds of critical conversations about education and technology that are reflected in the manifesto, but I think we're just seeing over the years since then much more sensitivity on the part of educators in general, students, institutions, to some of the risks and the issues and the problems that can come along with the kind of uncritical use of technology in education. So, I mean, obviously it's hard to think beyond the last year that we've just had because it's been so pivotal in so many ways, but I would say the kind of interest in and awareness of issues around surveillance, for example, has really ramped up in the last few years. So it feels, to me, I don't know, Shannon, what you think, but it feels like we're having conversations now that are actually somewhat, we're still trying to find ways of talking in positive and open and optimistic ways about technology and education because I think all of us still really believe in the possibilities, but at the same time, I think we've all found people very open to those more critical conversations as well, which has been very interesting, students as well. Yeah, and I agree with that, Jen, because I think the internet has become much less fun since 2011 when we first wrote the manifesto. We've moved, I think, in educational technology from this idea that teaching online was a kind of open, free territory where things could work differently and things could be just freer into now, ed tech as a market, which is driving and in many instances reshaping higher education teaching. And that opens up all the things that Jen has hinted at, the surveillance cultures, the kind of the architectures of instrumentalization and all the rest of it. And so it's a much less kind of, feels like it's less full of promise and it's more full of problems. And I think that is kind of partly what has kicked off what was Jen talking about, these more critical conversations and the recognition that we need to be having those conversations as educators. Thank you very much. Both the huge technological pace of change as well as the shift in our conversations around this, Jen.  You have this really quiet line, a routine of plagiarism, detection, structure in relation of distrust. Sounds like last year, right away. We feel pretty good about that one. I think you should. And your point about open, that open is based on closed. Again, I think even very good provocations towards criticism. But before I say anything more, let me just say, friends, I'm the moderator, I'm the emcee here, the place for questions is yours. Everyone in the participant's form, this is your chance to raise questions, ask more clarifications, to raise triumphant shouts of support and to also flag criticism and disagreement. The place is completely yours. And to begin with, by the way, in the chat, there was a plea for fellow Canadians. And I just wanted to say, hello, welcome to Matthew Plourde, who is also here from the, I think, University of De La Val. So the first question has already come in, is from David Poole at National University. He just put his question on the screen. I'm curious as to what some of the equity and access challenges that students in Edinburgh could face during 2020, 2021, perhaps they mirror the character in the US, perhaps they're different. I'm sure they're pretty similar. I mean, I think for Edinburgh, it's been a combination of students feeling incredibly frustrated by the digital pivot either because they don't have the skills or their teachers don't have the skills to deliver the kind of online teaching that they want or because they don't have access to the technologies that they need to do it. So there's been that or they're just frustrated by not being able to be on campus, right? Because the higher education is very campus centric and I think those of the last year, people really had to move away from that. So there's been that kind of body of students that have had a poor experience and a frustrating experience. And then there's the body of students on the other side who have just really benefited from it. So I was reading today an account from a student with a disability who was just saying, the digital pivot and the shift to hybrid teaching has been absolutely brilliant for me.  I don't have to come to campus to see my teacher and so on. So I think it's a very mixed bag and I bet it's pretty similar to what you're seeing over there. One of the things that I'm really happy to see in the UK in general and the University of Edinburgh in particular I guess as the context that I know the best is that the universities seem to have understood something of what this experience of crisis has been like for students. And I have seen a lot just in my capacity as a teacher this year, a lot of kind of materials flowing through my email inbox that have been reminding us as teachers to be sensitive to students, but also a lot of policies have kind of shifted in favour of more flexibility for students and more kind of understanding of the issues that people are facing. And as someone who's always taught sort of mature students I guess or mid-career professionals, we've always wanted that kind of sensitivity to the kind of lives of students and it's really been good to see that and I don't know how much that's been echoed in what's been happening in other countries, but I would be really interested to know whether other people have seen something like that. Just, you know, I think we've experienced that both here on the phone in our discussions over the past year, and I've heard this from quite a few people. Jen, I wouldn't if you have two different speakers going because we're getting a little bit of an echo from you. So I don't know if you're getting ear buds and indelible, just thinking of taking. Let me check it out, but I'll put myself on mute while I'm not talking. Makes sense, thank you, thank you. This is a great question, and I want to thank David for asking it, and I want to thank Jen and Sean for a very, very sensitive answer. Again, if you're new to the phone, this is an example of a text question. Just, David, just click the question mark button or type it in and we flashed out the screen for everyone to see. You can just enter anything you like in that question and answer box, and you can also click the raised hand if you'd like to join us on stage. Really deepening this transatlantic conversation. And while people are thinking and their brains are going further, Matthew Plur noticed in the chat, he was so naive. I wish I could tell you 2011 self-repair for real, but Rebecca Jones, he came to the tech industry regarding experience. And then there's some interesting questions. He asks, are there some ed tech companies who are much more attuned to the realities and requirements of learners and teachers? That's a good question. Sean, Jen, any names you want to throw out? No, not really, I'm sure there are companies out there. I don't know who they are. Actually, it would be really great if there were colleagues in the room today who do have kind of networks within industry where these conversations are happening, because in my experience, the kinds of conversations that we're having within universities and that we're flagging in the manifesto aren't necessarily happening in industry contexts. And part of that is about us and us getting better at raising those conversations and working with colleagues in industry to connect. And part of it, I guess, is about industry reaching out to education researchers and those of us doing critical research in this area to have those conversations. But yeah, no, I'd be very grateful to learn in this group about that, to be honest. Thank you. I hope we can find some more. And if anyone wants to throw any in the chat, please feel free. I'm pretty sure you'll probably shoot me here. I'll go at the same time. So I'm actually going to do my own sound output through a different device. Let's see if that makes a difference. Can you still hear me? Whoa. That seems to maintain the problem. I'm still getting echo from there. Rebecca falls about and asks, is one of these companies are evolving researchers? Apparently not. Oh, sorry. Yeah, I mean, some are, I know that big tech, of course the tech companies have researchers and have social scientists as well as computing scientists and all the rest. But I'm honestly not aware of which companies are having the in-depth conversations. Which of the ed tech companies are having the big conversations about what might be wrong with educational technology and how we might fix it. I'm not aware, but again, it's not really a field that I have done much researching at the moment. So it would be good to know more. You back, Jen. Maybe. You are. Okay. Now we have other questions that have come up and we've had questions that have came in by email before as well. And we have questions that have to do with the content of the manifesto as well as how it's changed. One of the problems that we admire most about it is this idea that place doesn't matter in terms of a published place to online. That basically virtual and physical are different modalities and that there are many, many different ways of thinking through that. I'm curious if you've gotten any kind of pushback from that or if this is something which really has proven to be a strong point of the manifesto. Jen. Well, I'm not sure this is an exact response to this question. So please, if whoever asked that doesn't let us know if you want us to say more. But I think actually the reason why, one of the main reasons why this manifesto was written in the first place was because we were in our roles as researchers and teachers and colleagues getting lots of pushback on some of the things that we were presenting as kind of a fundamentally good way of thinking about digital education. And in fact, that first statement in the manifesto which is that online can be a privileged mode has always been very controversial. And it's, as remained, I can't imagine it disappearing in the next iteration of the manifesto either actually because it is the foundational kind of idea behind the work that we've been doing in this manifesto and in this book. The idea that distance is a positive principle and not a deficit is actually hugely discussion provoking usually. And so these questions about, you know, space being different rather than worse if you're thinking about working virtually or working at a distance, I still do have conversations with people who are, will kind of agree that that's probably right, but still those assumptions come through when you talk to people about, well, you could do that if you couldn't manage to get everybody together in the room. And honestly, I don't think the last year of pandemic teaching has helped that tendency to see that as the kind of second best alternative because, you know, we're all, many people were just thrust into this way of teaching and learning without really choosing it or particularly wanting it. And I think it was seen as a kind of emergency response rather than something you might choose and design for. And I think we might see some unfortunate impacts from that in the next few years as we all deal with the shake out of this. I understand. Yeah. Oh, please go ahead, Sean. Oh, sorry, thanks. Yeah, and I think that's right, Jen. And I think it connects to actually what's my, probably my favorite point in the manifesto, which is when we say, don't succumb to campus envy, we are the campus, because I think that really came out of a program of research that we've been doing into what place and space means to students who are studying entirely online. And we found in that research that there was this sense among students that what we ended up calling campus envy, this idea that however good a time you are having in your online class, there was this sort of snagging sense that if you had been on campus or in the physical university, somehow it would have been even better. And often that that isn't true. In fact, often our students have a better time sort of studying online. They get a different kind of experience. But often when they compare it, they see it as being better than what they had on when they were studying on campus. So we coined this phrase campus envy to try to encapsulate that idea that people see the campus as being this kind of touchstone of authentic academic experience. And in that sense, they kind of internalize this idea that to be online is to be in a second best, the online is second best. Online teaching will never be as good as on campus teaching. And that's been a theme across both, as Jen says, across both manifestos and one that I think we'll want to extend into the next one as well, because it's absolutely critical.  It has a 500 year history of campus centrism and kind of fetishization of the campus and the sense that to be a student is to be on campus. And that's gonna, that takes a lot of pushing back on and a lot of rethinking. It does. And that's a great concept. I love the idea of campus envy. Campus envy. I have a follow-up from Mareth who asks, doesn't this depend on where in life you are? And I'm wondering if you wanted to grab them. Maybe Jen, since you talked about teaching adult learners. Sorry, my connection dipped out. So what does what depend on where in life? Mareth asked a question in terms of campus envy. Oh, campus envy, yeah. Doesn't it depend on where in life you are? I think that is absolutely must be the case. Yes. And I think we do understand higher education at the undergraduate level as being about much more than the academic, even the academic networking and the academic socializing. It has a kind of meaning for us that goes way beyond that in the UK and the US and other places, I think as well. And so I think the trouble that we have is if we want to start to think about education as something more flexible and possible to be engaged with from more places in more kinds of ways, then we also simultaneously have to think about what that means for the kind of, I don't know the process of kind of coming of age, I guess, for young people. If we're not able to say, we're going to put everybody together on a campus for four years or three years. And this is a kind of formative experience in your life. What does it begin to look like? And I think that's an interesting and nice challenge to have in a way, but it depends if we just ditch the stuff and then don't find ways of other sorts of coming of age spaces and places for people. Well, that's a really good point. Jen, if you want to meet yourself for a second, I want to test something out. Yeah, it might be that we're getting a feedback loop from that, but this is a crucial point. Now we're sticking a little bit of echo. Let's see if this makes a difference. Oh my gosh, that did it. That did it. We can think of this as the Edinburgh double echo that we just had. Jen's point was crucial, I think, about traditional age students, which is where Mareth's point really comes in handy, where you are in life. A couple of comments have come up that are observations that build on this. I want to make sure that we can see this. One came in from Abby Johnson. I see campus envy a lot, especially the faculty who teach both. I know faculty who deliberately try to make their online courses worse to be competitive with the on-ground version. Oh, which is horrifying. Abby, thank you for that. And also in the chat, Matia observes the campus was never all that. All teaching happened to void the classroom never to be seen or assessed by peers. So I think we're doing a good job of deconstructing the centrality of the campus there. But we also have another question that takes us from a different angle. And I want to make sure that you guys get a chance to wrangle this one. And this continues our transatlantic theme, by the way, bringing in the South Atlantic, because we have a question from South Africa. This is from Sukena, who asks, in the manifesto, you mentioned the central role of the online teacher. Can you talk about that in the context of the online being the privileged mode? And do you want to talk about facilitation? Ah, yes. Well, I wasn't, yeah, no, you talk about facilitation. I'll tell you, I think I can talk about why we focused the manifesto on the idea of the online teacher, because we did get quite a lot of flack, actually, when we first wrote the manifesto, because we called it the manifesto for teaching online. And lots of people said, why haven't you called it the manifesto for learning online? Because this is supposed to be all about learners. And actually, we did push back really hard on that because we specifically wanted this manifesto to be about the art and the craft of teaching and about the responsibilities of the teacher to, in their professional work. Because I think one kind of quite worrying trend, I guess, in educational technology is to see the kind of deep professionalization of the teacher and the replacement of certain parts of the teaching function by technology. And we wanted to really push back against that. You know, there's loads of things that are positive about the kind of shift over the last decade into talking about student-centered learning and putting student at the center of the educational experience. But actually, we still have to take responsibility for what it means for our students to learn as teachers and we still have to value teachers as professionals. So that was why we called it manifesto for teaching online. It's about teaching, it's not about learning. But that's a different issue from the facilitation one, Jen, that I'll hand back to you, that one, if you like. Thanks, yeah. The question made me think about these conversations. And actually, this was happening even at the time of the first manifesto where people were really excited about the shift to online education because they precisely saw some kind of like a ratio of power dynamics between teachers and students and that this could be a much kind of flatter space where teachers wouldn't be teachers, they would be facilitators or guides and maybe people didn't need teachers at all and they could teach themselves and each other. And all of this stuff, which has now been actually greatly enhanced and exacerbated by discussions about the technology as the teacher, but that's come in maybe a little more in the last few years. All of these things I think are just super problematic in terms of thinking about the kind of power that at least in formal educational settings like universities that the teacher and the institution have and a chance as the responsibilities that come alongside that. And it's not that there are not other models of teaching that can be interestingly explored, but the idea that we can say that the kind of, that the responsibilities and the choices are nothing to do with us and that we're just facilitators and other people are leading their own learning as I think not a good direction for us to be taking in universities. There's almost a labor argument about this, that this is really centering the professional work and status of the instructor. I'm using the term instructor as a baseline neutral term here. I think that's, is it okay to come in there Brian? Because I think that's absolutely right. And the popularity of labor issues is a really vital one here. And I think for me, if there was any part of the manifesto that I've had some, apparently have some doubts about, it's the bit where we say that we welcome our robot colleagues. We say automation need not impoverished education. We welcome our robot colleagues. And the reason we said that is because we didn't, we don't want to get into a position where there's kind of automation bad, human teacher good, because that doesn't help us think creatively about technological change. And what we as teachers can do positively with automation, but it does kind of, it does kind of sometimes shock people I think, because I think when we redevelop the manifesto we need to nuance that idea a little bit because we need to recognize the connection of automation to academic precarity and the connection of automation to the kind of routinization and degrading and deep professionalization of higher education teaching that we're seeing. So I think there are quite a few issues there to unpick. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. That's, Sukena would have fantastic question. And I'm really, really, really glad that you picked that one out. And that just shows, I think the strength of these manifestos over time is just how deeply they go. We have another question that's coming in. Questions are now becoming, coming in like the wind. And this is one from Rocky at Messiah University. And she asks, in my online classes, I have a big focus on students as digital content creators, creative comments, et cetera. I'd love to hear more about your statement, remixing digital content predefined authorship. Any of you? Yeah. I mean, thanks because I think that's exactly the kind of teaching practice that sparked some of the thoughts and the research that led to this particular manifesto point. We spent many years on teaching on RMSC and digital education program, trying to work with different kinds of representations of knowledge. So we've always invited students to produce digital essays, to produce multimodal work, to produce creative things that they can do with digital spaces and digital tools. And that's all been really positive actually. And it's one of the things that I think I and lots of colleagues are the most proud of in terms of the kinds of work that get produced through that approach and through that program. But it also asks us as teachers and people assessing this work and students as they're putting it together to ask some hard questions about whose work this is. Especially when, for example, students are using the kinds of really good, interesting tools that allow people to sort of create animations or other things with like a bank of existing materials that they kind of remix and put together or where people are bringing in sort of sound or images that they didn't create directly. Looking at remix and assessing remix does ask us to think differently about authorship. And one of our colleagues, James Lam, has done a lot of really interesting work just exploring these kinds of issues about remix and assessment and authorship that have kind of inspired some of our thinking around this. Just quickly, if you have anything you wanna throw into the chat from James Lam, please feel free to and I can share it through Twitter and so on. Go ahead, Sha. I think also this is part of a kind of bigger program project of assessment or grading reform, isn't it? Because assessment kind of protocols at least in our university and much of the UK have historically and traditionally, at least in humanities and social science has been kind of focused on the written essay, the single stable text that's produced by the individual author. And so sort of coming at this, I suppose via a sort of post-structuralist kind of depth of the author sort of perspective, which is kind of what framed that original manifesto point. We need to understand how did new modes of writing, had a new modes of content creation and content sharing and remix, shift the fundamental and underpinning idea of the author and the idea of the individual student as the kind of unit by which we judge academic attainment and actually try and think a bit differently about that. Think about kind of how remix brings in different kinds of literacies and different kind of writing, abilities and competencies and a different kind of working across networks, which in itself is really valuable and a really important intellectual work, but that as conventional universities, we haven't historically been that very particularly good at taking account of. So I think it's a bigger program of reform as well. Interesting. Again, once again, this manifesto dives deeply and deeply. And Rocky, thank you for that great question. And of course, I'm really glad for your students having a benefit of that approach. I love how your answer managed to work through the long history of textual death of the author from Barth and Foucault all the way up through the practice of how to teach right now. We have more questions coming in and friends, if you'd like to ask a video question, again, just please click the raise hand button and you can do that. This is a question from the question. Flavor question I come up against often as an instructional designer, that teaching online well is a huge undertaking and many institutions pay adjunct well. In the U.S. situation, adjunct is the faculty member who was paid part-time for individual classes, they're not full-time members of the staff. Do you wanna speak to that question of the labor of teaching online? Yeah, so when we wrote the manifesto from the kind of perspective of our own master's or graduate program in digital education, and that program is quite unusual in that we don't really use adjuncts particularly. So every course or every module or every unit on that program is led by, you know, pretty much by an academic member of staff who's teaching from a research-based perspective. And absolutely, the labor is immense, but we were lucky in that sense in that with that particular program we had and we were able to run that program without a lot of adjunct kind of input, we've always managed to keep student numbers low enough that we can kind of give students that quality of experience and we can lead as academics. But I mean, you're absolutely right that there's a real strong kind of trajectory here that, you know, we front-load development of online teaching and then we leave adjuncts and poorly paid precarious, people on precarious contracts to kind of do the grunt work of moderation and assessment and so on. And I think that's a really worrying trajectory and something that again, we need to be pushing a lot of hard on the general that you come. Sorry, I lost my connection again, but I've tried a different browser now, so I think we're good. You sound great. Oh, perfect, better than before. Yes. All right, Chrome it is. Was this a question about precarious and academic labor? Well, precarity, yes, and it came right out of the US settings we're talking about adjuncts, but also the question that teaching well online is a huge undertaking and it can all take more time than to teach face-to-face. Yeah, this is funny and this is a conversation I've been having a lot in the last year, as you can imagine, because I think that one of the things that is the case is that once you've done something once, it becomes possible to build on that the next time with it, you know, in an online course in a way that maybe isn't so visible and apparent the first time you do it when it's just a massive amount of work to put something together. One of the things I'm a bit worried about is, you know, people have put an unprecedentedly huge amount of work into putting courses online in the last year and if we are rushing straight back to the classroom and face-to-face teaching as soon as possible, people might miss some of the opportunities for reusing, remixing, building on materials. That is actually one of the nicest things about the amount of work that goes into the pre-preparing of materials. So I'm kind of worried that people won't actually get that good experience of being able to say, oh, okay, this week from last year was still pretty good. I'm gonna keep this one and I can just, you know, make a little tweak to this one and that will be great as well. And I don't know, I think it remains to be seen, but I am seeing people sort of really keen to get away from the amount of work that it was without realizing that actually that work is more significant the first time you do it. It really is that classic pump you have to get over the first time and then in theory, you know, it gets easier with every subsequent iteration. Thank you, Jen, for multitasking brilliantly and sharing that link here. I just put this in the chat and in fact, I'll just flash it for everyone to see here. This is a link to your colleague, James Lam, about remixing digital authorship. So if you wanna grab that, that looks really tasty. Thank you again for that really, really good answer. This is Abby, you hit upon a major, major topic. And if you're new to the forum, by the way, going back, we've been addressing academic labor since the beginning. So there are many discussions about this. We have several futures questions and I'll bring in one of them from Betsy Kells at the Penn Language Center. And Betsy asks, regarding best practices, can something like universal design for learning ignore context or perhaps cultural context? Interesting. Sorry, Jen. Honestly, I don't think universal design for learning is a kind of concept that's particularly known in the UK. Am I wrong, Jen? I mean, this isn't a framework that I'm particularly familiar with, it would be... No, I would say I've seen more of that in the kind of literature around like online course design. And I think this is about designing for as kind of wider a range of users as possible. Am I right about that, Brian? You're nodding, so I think I am. Yeah, and I'll just put a link in the chat. This is aimed in part at physical accessibility. How do you design for disability, for example? And UDL is very, very powerful stuff. Yeah, and the question was, I think whether we have to think about that in the context of the manifesto statement that's about context and best practice. That's a really great question. I would like someone else to answer it. I think, yeah, I think that's a really great question. Betsy, you have to ponder that. Maybe what we should do, Betsy, is we should circle back to that question in a future session and just get some folks who specialize in UDL and have them tackle it. Cause I think that's a really, really good question. We have a few more questions and I'm afraid we're starting to write in the last 10 minutes. So I wanna make sure that you get a chance everybody to ask your, to say your piece, as we say. So here's a question from Matthew Plurnt, who asks, how do we make ourselves valuable so robots remain colleagues and not overlords? That's a really good question. I think we need to just continue to value our own work and value ourselves. I think there's a lot of, I don't know, when I do kind of scoping of the kind of dominant kind of language that's used in some of the educational technology sort of policy and industry and think pieces. So much of it is about, you know, now that, you know, crudely, now everything's available online. Teachers are gonna, teachers are being reduced to coaches and mentors and artificial intelligence is gonna do the real teaching for us. This is a really dominant discourse in the field at the moment. I think it's for us as partly as individual academics and teachers and educators, but also as institutions just to get better telling really compelling stories about what we want the future of higher education to look like and what we want the future of higher education teaching to look like and why we need to put the professional teacher at the center of that future and not allow technology to be kind of leveraged in to take that kind of, you know, that this kind of solutionism that we're seeing constantly in the sector that technology is providing a solution to all the problems that we're seeing within education. Without those problems ever really being defined. So we're seeing a really worrying discourse where higher education teaching is constantly in deficit mode without the nature of that deficit ever being explicitly explained to us, but the kind of loose promise of technology coming in to make it all better. And I think that part of this is about, and I think this connects to the way that Jen is doing around speculation and speculative futures. It's about developing really compelling stories about the future, which value what we do as teachers and what the teaching profession does. But Jen, I know you'll have more to say about that from the perspective of the book. I would have more to say about speculation, but I think also one other kind of answer to that question is that I think we can usefully push back against the tendency to see different parts of the academic role as separable from each other. So one of the things that I find particularly troubling is the increasing push to see things like requesting extensions, for example, as something that could be taken away from the kind of teacher and give them less to do while giving it to a central admin spot or automating it in some way. I think we also see this in relation to some extent to kind of pastoral student support where it's thought to be that maybe that work should be done by the student support team rather than by the teacher. And all of those things seem to me to be damaging the relationships between students and teachers that I would consider to be kind of at the heart of what we're trying to do in higher education. And I think we don't actually know what the impact of a student building the kind of relationship with the teacher where they can ask them for an extension, what impact that has on being able to have bigger conversations with the teacher about other things that might seem more academic in nature. And so I think the solution to the kind of crisis of overwork and labor issues in higher education is not to push for more unbundling of services, but to think differently about staff student ratios. And these are the kinds of things that I think might help us kind of maintain the importance and relevance of our role and be better for students and for the kind of relationships of higher education. Wow, that was a small manifesto by itself. Great. I have opinions about this, Brian. Why we're so glad to have you here. And also I like how you kind of pointed back towards the centrality of the instructor again. That was terrific, what a great question. Thank you again for doing that. And thank you both for going so far with that. In the chat, while these two are thinking so thoughtfully about this, we also have a whole series of follow-ups on the universal design for learning questions. Ed Webb, a British expatriate now trapped in Pennsylvania, mentioned that his unusually non-digitally online college did a lot of UDL on their pivot online during the pandemic. George Station asks about cultural competence and then suggests a couple of books about UDL and equity slash anti-racism. Rocky has a really, really good points about cognitive ability, cultural diversity, language. So a lot of good discussions coming there. And then Rocky also suggests Anne's Ratesh Fitzgerald's book. So Rocky, if maybe you should be a good guest for us to have on the forum. While we're thinking about that angle of the future, Roxanne Riskin asked another question that cuts us into a different angle, which is in your manifesto, I'm curious if you found any connections with environmental benefits like carbon footprint reduction or more environmental awareness with online teaching. Yeah, in the book, the conclusion to the book sort of outlines some of the areas that we need to cover in the next manifesto. And climate change was very much one of those.  The cutie. Yeah, climate change was an absolutely key one because we didn't in the 2016 manifesto. And I feel bad about this. We didn't reference or talk about the impact of digital on climate crisis at all. We do need to address that because we now know the immense kind of impact of teaching online and the production of our devices, the emissions and the environmental burdens that server farms kind of bring. And we haven't really had those discussions. I know we're increasingly having them now within the community, but I think we've been quite slow to come to this. Well, we certainly have at Edinburgh and there's an immense amount of work to do on that. And it is a problematic one for us. I mean, Jen and I are currently thinking of ways to design education. So we minimise the need for students to travel, for example, by using digital creatively, but then that doesn't really help us deal with the issue of dependence on cloud services and server farms. So there's a lot to unpick. It's a really good question. Yeah, I'm just, I'm so glad that you said it in that way, Shan, because I think the immediate thought is, well, digital is better for the environment. And yes, I mean, there are some arguments to be made about that for sure. But I think as digital educators, we do really need to think a lot about the nuances of that issue and not just say, well, we're, you know, we're better than some ways of teaching because it requires a lot more thought as Shan says. Oh, great question. And thank you both for opening that into new directions, especially as I write my book on climate change in higher ed. I appreciate all of that. We have one last question and we're just skating in just under the radar. And this is one that's been asked by a few different people. So I'll put one of them up on the screen from Benjamin Rifkin at Hofstra who asks the experience of teaching online during the pandemic should not be allowed to lay fallow. What do you think are the most important lessons learned that all instructors should reflect on in face to face? That's a good summative question. I have one answer. I'm sure Jen will have others. For me, it's about what we learned about mobility over the last year. So a lot of the work that we've done in our research program has been around using mobility theory to understand kind of the nature of movement and the nature of how we kind of historically tended to privilege sedentaryism and campus over distance and the ability to be free of campus and to move around. And I think over the last year, we've learned to value, we've learned to kind of long for the ability to move again and to travel again. But we've also learned to value the ability to stay in one place and to be at home. And I think there are lessons from that to take into the post pandemic era in the way that we design our teaching for students to recognize that students increasingly are going to want that freedom to move about when they need to move about and to stay still when they need to move still. And that presents some really big issues for campus centrism and the tendency of most universities to require students to come to campus and the relationship between online distance learning and on campus learning. So for me, that's a really exciting kind of thing to be grappling with over the next few years. Do you think that, just really quickly, do you think that the pandemic will have done a massive blow to campus envy? I mean, it definitely has been the case that ideas about kind of contact have radically changed in the last year, right? Like we just have seen the hugest shift in understandings of distance when we think about social distance now as a kind of safety, as a way of expressing care and trust. It's a really weird situation. It's interesting. It is, it is. Jen, did you want to add anything else in terms of what we should take away from the pandemic? Yeah, I think that coming back to the point about surveillance actually, I think we are at a very pivotal moment for education generally in relation to surveillance and monitoring and privacy. And the pandemic really exacerbated a lot of trends towards all of those things, towards more monitoring, towards surveillance, towards remote proctoring and all kinds of things that I think we as a community of teachers tend to find a bit problematic even though we use them. So I think actually it's more of a question than a statement about the future based on the pandemic. It's just I'm really interested in what kind of direction we will be able to push these questions about surveillance and privacy in the coming years given that I think we've lost some ground this year as a result of a lot of decisions being made quickly. Yeah, I would, I would, I'm going to be paying a lot of attention to that. So surveillance and privacy on the one hand and mobility on the other. Two fantastic answers to end up a whole series of fantastic answers. Thank you both, Shan and Jen for being a superb guest today. I'm really delighted that you could have joined us and I love that we're able to learn so much from all of you. Let me just quickly ask, what's the best way for folks to keep up with you? Besides obviously buying your book, several copies. One of the best ways to follow your current thought on this. We're both pretty active on Twitter, aren't we? Yeah, and I'll put our Twitter's user names up. It'd be great to connect with colleagues here on Twitter at some point. Yeah, that would be great. The other thing is the website of the Center for Research and Digital Education always has all the latest events. In fact, we're running a lot of online seminars at the moment as is everybody. So if people want to attend any of those, please do. We would love to have anyone from the group here. And just to say, Jen, you got a three-letter Twitter handle at my envy, serious envy, Jar. It's just about being an early adopter, but thank you. Hello, hello. Well, we are out of time and I need to wrap things up, but I want to thank all of you for great questions, really, really great comments. As always, I really learned a lot. I'm really delighted that you were able to share so much. I think we have questions left over and some comments. I'd like to share some of them in a blog post to come. And in the meantime, again, let me thank Jen and then we thank Jen. And just quickly point out where things are going in the next couple of weeks. Remember that we have a whole series of great topics coming up, everything from mentoring professional development to trauma-informed teaching, how to spark exciting conversations about educational technology as well as improving equity for black students. If you'd like to keep talking about all these issues, everything from mobility to what happens in universal design for learning, just please on Twitter use the hashtag FTDE and we can keep rolling with that. If you'd like to dive back into the past into some of our sessions where we've talked about academic labor and of course about teaching with technology, just head to tinyurl.com slash FTF archive and you can see about 260 recordings right there. And that's all for today's session. Thank you all for a great, great conversation. Please keep it all coming. Everyone, good luck with this summer. Good luck planning for this fall and stay safe. We'll see you online. Bye-bye.


Good morning sir. Okay, started. Good morning everyone. Good morning Prince Manu, Roshan and Kanan. I think the others will join us as we get started. Let's pray together. I take a minute just to pray. And then we will get started with this course. This is our book study on the book of Romans. Alright, so let's just pray together. Could one of us please unmute our mics and then we'll pray and we'll get started. Sure, Pastor. Father, we submit this day into your hands. We submit this session into your hands. We thank you Lord for this provision that you have made for us. Father, even as we, Lord, humble ourselves and learn from your word, Jesus, let the word minister to us equip us, empower us Jesus. We know these words are alive because you are alive. So we thank you Father Lord for this privilege and an honor to learn from your word Father. I pray that this session will empower us Jesus. And we submit this, the rest of the course into your hands. Let it be a blessing. I pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Thank you, Russian. And welcome everyone. So this course is a study on the book of Romans. And we have, we will be releasing the course notes, you know, chapter by chapter as we go along. This will be put up in the course work section in the Google class. So you could download the PDFs from there and follow along. So there are three PDFs put out there already. And we'll just, you know, quickly look at the introduction to this, to the book of Romans and then get started chapter by chapter. Now, this third year, in the third year, like we mentioned earlier yesterday, what we are trying to do as we equip our students is to give a lot more practical input on the ministry areas, whether it's local church or worship ministry or youth or children or administration or media and technology, a lot of practical things that you need. If you're going to be leading or involved actively in church or Christian ministry. But at the same time, we want to delve into a little more deeper study of things. So first two years has been a lot of topical, been covering different topics. And those topics are important because, you know, you need, we need to have a broad understanding of things in the ministry because we're going to face all kinds of things. So there's a broad array of topics that we covered in the first two years. In the third year, we're going into the books of the Bible, primarily the New Testament. So a lot of the studies would be covering New Testament books. Some, I think, just one course does, you know, the entire, when we look at Revelation and Daniel. But otherwise we are, we want to study book by book in the New Testament because that's going to be the basis of a lot of our teaching and ministry.  I know these days, many of us, you know, we buy books online, but even online books, they give us a preview. You know, you can look at a summary of the book here, maybe a preview of the book, the cover, of course, and then the contents a little bit, maybe of chapter one, the introduction and chapter one. When we buy physical books, you know, we usually turn to the back of the book because that gives us a little summary of the book to see if we are interested. You know, it kind of highlights what is the book cover, and then maybe we may even read the introduction. We may read a little bit about the author, said I lost my connection, but okay. Can you all see me, are you with me so far? Yes, Pastor. Okay, great. Because I got a message saying I lost connection. Anyway, yeah. Okay, great, great. All right. So that's what we're going to do. We're going to just give a little overview of the course and then get into the introduction to the book of Romans. You want to understand what is this book about? Why was it written? When was it written? And what are the key things we're going to get out of this study of the book of Romans. And then we're going to go worse by worse study. Right. So I'm going to share the PDF, PDFs that are being made available to you just so that we could all track together. And you will know where what I'm referring to as I'm speaking. So this is just a course overview of the first document that we had put out. Yeah, it's going to be a study with Romans. We will have three simple assessments, different points along the course, the grading structure. All of you are familiar with what I would recommend if you have time as you read along. You know, there are lots of commentaries. Of course, you can download lots of commentaries, but I would encourage you to look at one of them, which is David Casig's word commentary and your word. You can look it up online or if you're using eSword, you can get downloaded spot of eSword and you can follow, make use of it. Just additional reading and then notes, the PDF notes that I will give you has a lot of content already. But if you want to read some more, if you have the time to do it, you're welcome to look at other commentaries and resources. And one of those I would point you to is David Casig. The reason I picked him is because he comes from a spirit-filled background. And so he does bring in that aspect of understanding of the word. So that would be useful. Now, let's get into an introduction to the book of Romans. I don't want to overstate things as though the book of Romans is the most important book in the New Testament. So I don't want to do that. But yet at the same time, the Paul's episode to the Romans is regarded by many as one of the best expressions of Christian doctrine. The other episodes to whether it's Corinth, Galatia, or Ephesians, or the prison episodes that Paul wrote to the Philippians, the Colossians, and so on. They are addressing certain elements of Christian life or the life of the church. They're addressing problems and those kinds of things. But the episode to the Romans is doctrinal. It's more teaching-oriented. It starts off from the very basic of the existence of God and goes through a journey of sin, salvation, the gift of righteousness, the grace of God, talking about Christian living, and so on. So it is, again, forgive me for saying it. It's the best episode when it comes to Christian doctrine teaching. And so it is something very important to study, to understand, and also in it and probably the only place in the New Testament. We have about three chapters that really explain to us the relationship between the church and Israel, possibly. Of course, the book of Hebrews asks some of it in terms of covenant, but in terms of what is God doing with Israel and with the church, you'll find that in the book of Romans. So again, it's very unique from that perspective, because the entire Old Testament is God's dealings with the people of Israel and then there is the prophecies of Christ coming. And then suddenly you come into the New Testament and it starts over Jesus and the church. And we wonder what happened to Israel, you know, because the whole entire Old Testament was God working with Israel. You cross over the New Testament is about the church. What happened to Israel? So in the book of Romans, Paul is very beautifully bring that out to us. And so that is also important for us to understand. And like we said, many key doctrines, that means the teaching of the church is established in the book of Romans. I'm just repeating the existence of God, the issue of sin and conscience, the issue of salvation, the issue of grace, the issue of righteousness, and the issue of Christian living and various aspects of dealing with how does a Christian relate to others? How does a Christian relate to the government, civil government? How does a Christian relate to sin and overcome sins? So all these are doctrines. These are the key teachings of the church, if you will. And so all these are covered in this book of Paul's episode to the Romans. So let's get a little background of what motivated the apostle Paul to write this book, when was it written? And what was some of the things Paul was expecting to happen? So now these dates, of course, we know that all of this happened in the first century AD. So these dates are approximate, meaning they are reconstructed based on various pieces of information that people have over time put together. And so we approximate say, you know, this was the time when Paul went on his first missionary journey, when he went on a second missionary journey and third missionary journey. And so this is where he would have most likely written various episodes. So these are approximate. So, you know, you may find some variations in different commentaries and so on. But just keep in mind that people are trying to make the best estimate of when the episode would have been written or when Paul went on his missionary journey and so on. So if there are variations there by three, four, three or four years, don't get worried about it. Everybody's just trying to make their best guess based on information we're able to put together. So what happened during Paul's second missionary journey that is around 8049 to 52. And you can see some of the places that Paul went. Sorry, this map shows his third missionary journey, but the second missionary journey he came to Corinth, and we read about this in Acts chapter 18. So he came to Corinth, and then at Corinth, he met a couple, Aquila and Priscilla. Now what happened around that time was the emperor in Rome, Emperor Claudius in around 8049. He had ordered all the Jews to leave Rome. So the Jews left Rome, and they had went back to wherever their hometowns. So Aquila and Priscilla were Jewish believers who were from Rome, and they landed up in Corinth where Paul was ministering. And so they joined with Paul and, you know, they ministered with Paul, but remember they were Jewish believers who came from Rome. So this was Paul's interaction with believers from Rome. He would have heard a lot about what was happening in Rome and so on. And he had a lot of time with Aquila and Priscilla, and eventually after sometime around 8054, Aquila and Priscilla went back to Rome. And there they would have surely spoken to the believers at Rome about Paul, about his ministry and so on. Now in his third missionary journey, Paul, of course, he travels. He spends a lot of time in Ephesus, and then he comes down to Corinth around 8053 to 58. And from Corinth, he writes to the believers at Rome. So this is, again, approximate around 8057 during his third missionary journey. Paul is in Corinth. From there, he is writing to the believers at Rome. So how do we know that Paul must have written this episode from Corinth? There are a few indicators there. If you go to Romans, the 16th chapter and the 23rd verse, now this is in the PDF, so we could just look at it there. And Romans 16, verse 23, Paul mentions the names of two people. He mentions the name of Gaius, who is very likely the person who was also mentioned in Paul's episode to the Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 114, and Gaius was a believer in Corinth. So he says, Gaius, my host, and the host of the whole church creeds here. So Gaius is somebody from Corinth. We know that from 1 Corinthians 114. So that's one indication that, okay, Paul is staying with Gaius and he's writing from his house. So most likely he is writing from Corinth. Another indicator is he mentions the name of Erastus, the treasurer of the city. And then this is more of a piece of archaeological information. Erastus is, we find that he is the head of the, you know, what we would refer to as the Public Works Department, or people who are going to take care of the city. And we see his name mentioned in 2 Timothy chapter 4, verse 20, when Paul mentions him to Timothy. And we also get some archaeological confirmation of him that there is a pavement or a stone that was part of a road. You know, in those days, these roads put stones to make those roads. And on one of those stones, this inscription, then translated it says, Erastus, and use the word little ship, that means he was official magistrate who paved this road at his own expense. So you have this piece of archaeological evidence that adds to, you know, kind of gives a little support to the fact that Erastus was a city official in Corinth. Paul mentions his name. So that's an again, a second indicator that most likely he wrote this episode through the Romans from Corinth. Now, some of the motivations that which led to the writing of the, this letter to the Romans is that Paul in towards the end of his letter to the Romans, he shares about his plan to come to Spain. So if you want to look at the map, there's Jerusalem. There's Corinth where Paul is writing is he from in his third missionary journey. He's planning to go to Spain. He wants to go and extend the work of God's kingdom over in Spain. But he says, I want to go via Rome. So I'm planning to come to Rome on my way to Spain. So you read about that in Romans 15 and worse, versus 22 to 2033. Can somebody just read this passage for us out loud? Because there are other things that we can draw from this passage. Can somebody read this for us, please? You can read it from your Bible or you can read it from PDF, whichever is convenient for you. Okay, I'll read it. For this reason, I also have been much hindered from coming to you. But now no longer having a place in these parts and having a great desire these many years to come to you. Whenever I journey to Spain, I shall come to you. For I hope to see you on my journey and to be helped on my way there by you. If first I may enjoy your company for a while, but now I'm going to Jerusalem to minister to the saints. For it pleased those from Macedonia and Akhaya to make a certain contribution for the poor among the saints who are in Jerusalem. It pleased them indeed and they are their debtors. For if the Gentiles have been partakers of their special things, their duty is also to minister to them in material things. Therefore, when I have performed this and have sealed to them, this route I shall go by way to you to Spain. But I know that when I come to you, I shall come in the fullness of the blessing of the gospel of Christ. Now I beg you brethren, through the Lord Jesus Christ and through the love of the Spirit that you strap together between prayers to God for me. That I may be delivered from those in Judea who do not believe. And that my service for Jerusalem may be acceptable to the saints. That I may come to you with joy by the will of God and may be refreshed together with you. Now the God of peace be with you all. Amen. Amen. Thank you. So there's a lot that we can see. We can get a feel for Paul's heart. So he says for many years, verse 23, for many years I've been longing to come to you. So you can imagine from the time he met Aquila and Priscilla and they told him about the believers in Rome. And we will talk a little bit about how the church in Rome started. But from the time he heard about that and he had the time to interact with Aquila and Priscilla in Corinth, till now he must have had this great desire, hey, I need to go to these believers in Rome. And we also see one of his desires was, he says that in verse 29, he says, When I come to you, I will come in the fullness of the blessing of the gospel of Christ. So you can see Paul's heart here, I want to go to these believers and I want to bring something to them spiritually. And when we get into chapter one, he expresses that again that he says, I want to impart to you some spiritual gift. So that is Paul's heart. I want to go to these believers who are in Rome. I want to come to them in the fullness of the blessing of the gospel of Christ. I want to impart to them something spiritual. So he feels like he can give to them spiritually and that's his motivation in going there. And for those of us who like to travel and minister or who some of us may be in traveling ministry, this is what motivates us. Why do you want to go to a city somewhere and minister to the believers there? What is motivating you? It's not about going in sight saying it's not about, you know, I want to go and see a place or experience the culture and it's not recreational. But really the motivation is, I want to give them something in the spirit. I want to impart to them the full blessing of the gospel of Christ. I want to come and strengthen them spiritually. That's the motivation. That's why people travel. They go from place to place. They go to different places and minister to believers. That's the motivation. But then Paul is kind of shedding a little bit about what he's planning to do. Many of us know that around that time there was a famine in Jerusalem. There was hardship there among the believers in Jerusalem. And so Paul had encouraged some of these churches that he had started in the region of, like he mentions here, Achaia where Corinth was and Macedonia where, you know, other cities were Philippine, so on. He's encouraging those churches that he had, which are on the Eastern part of Europe, that he had started. He administered to is encouraging them to contribute to help the saints in Jerusalem. So Paul felt responsible, his part of his responsibility that he would take this offering and go to Jerusalem. Give it to the believers there so that they will have some help. And then after that, he wanted to go to Spain, but he said, I will go through Rome and I will make my way to Spain. So that was his plan and that's what he's sharing over here. So that was Paul's motivation. He longed to go and minister to the believers at Rome. So now quickly, a little background. How did the church in Rome, how does church at Rome start? Who would have started that church? What we do know is this, that on the day of Pentecost, there were visitors from Rome. Right? So this is in Acts chapter two. You know, on the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit was poured out. They were Jewish people from various parts of Asia and around Asia. And Europe would come to Jerusalem to celebrate the feasts. And they would come sometimes for a period of 60 days, right? They would start off with the celebration of the feast of unleavened bread or even the feast of Passover. They would go into the feast of first fruits, which was three days later. And they would stay on till Pentecost, which was another 50 days later. So for a good 60 days, they would be in Jerusalem. And so there were Jewish people who came to Jerusalem at that time. And we see recorded for us here in Acts chapter two, verse 10, that there were visitors from Rome. And they were both Jews in proselytes. That means there were Jewish people and there were Gentiles who had embraced Judaism. So they are referred to as proselytes as they were all there in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost. So we can just imagine that some of these Jews who had come from Rome were impacted on the day of Pentecost. They were touched and they stayed in Jerusalem for a good period of time to learn from the apostles, who stayed under the apostles' teaching and doctrine. And then there was a mix of Jews and Gentile believers there. And then eventually, after some time, they would have gone back to Rome. But they had been impacted on the day of Pentecost. They have stayed for some time under the teaching of the apostles in Jerusalem. And gradually they would have gone back to Rome. So that is how the church at Rome got started. We don't have the mention of any leader in the church at Rome. We don't have a founding apostle going there to start that church. All we know is it must have been these believers, Jewish people, Jewish and Gentile proselytes. On the day of Pentecost, who were affected by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and what happened from that day, who eventually went back to Rome and they continued in the faith. So we could say that the church in Rome was a spiritual church because, hey, these people were there on the day of Pentecost. And we could say that these believers in Rome were people who received the teaching of the apostles. They were established in what the apostles taught them. So you can imagine the apostles would have taught them. The teachings of Jesus were taught them about the end times. Everything that we read in the apostles had been imparted to these believers through the apostles. The apostles would have told them all about all miracles Jesus did. And he'd have told them about the great commission that Jesus gave us as people, as disciples to go and make disciples. So all this would have been imparted by the apostles to these believers, Jews and Gentiles. And then eventually they would go back to Rome and then they do the work. So these unnamed believers would have spread the gospel at Rome. And what we know is that it was a mixed group of Jews and Gentile believers and that the church must have multiplied. There must have been several house churches at Rome. We can say that because in Romans 16, Paul mentions that. He says in Romans 16 verses 3 to 5, could somebody read that for us please? Go ahead. I would like to thank my fellow workers in Christ Jesus who risked their own necks for my life. To whom not only I give thanks, but also all the churches of the Gentiles, likewise create the church that is in their house. Great man we love the Gentiles. Who is the first room offer as you have to price? So Paul, when he's writing to the believers in Rome, he says, I greet Aquila and Priscilla. Now Aquila or Priscilla and Aquila, they are longtime friends of Paul. He says, I greet them, greet the church that is in their house. So we understand that house churches were happening in Rome. So that is the way the churches would have been meeting. Whether they all came together at one point, we don't know, but they were churches meeting in various houses and that's how the body believers were there at Rome. So Paul's letter would have been read across all these house churches in Rome to build them up and encourage them. So this is a little background of the whole history there behind the people to whom Paul wrote and how they came together in Paul's relationship to them. We talk a little bit more about how Paul wrote to the believers at Rome. Now about the book of Romans itself. Again, so this is like you're reading the back cover of the book or the introduction. What are some of the key things that we could highlight about Romans? So one important thing is this. Romans explains to us very clearly what the gospel is. This is the gospel that we are sinners. Christ died for us. Rose rose up again. Whoever believes in him receives forgiveness of sins. It's the clearest explanation of the gospel. We find that in Romans. Secondly, Romans also, like I said, it starts from the very basic. It gives us a full spiritual journey. So like we said, it starts with the very existence of God, talks about the sinfulness of man, the consequences of sin, focuses on what Christ did for us on the cross, how we can be justified and receive righteousness through grace by faith. And then how do you overcome sin on the basis of the cross and through the work of the spirit? That's Romans 8. And then how we live the Christian life, the rest of the chapters. So it is a full roadmap from start on to a place of living the Christian life. It's a roadmap of starting from existence of God to living the Christian life. So really, you could actually, if somebody reads Romans, they can actually get saved, learn how to overcome sin and learn how to live the Christian life. It's like foundations. You know, it's a good journey that Paul takes as somebody through. Then another important theme, Romans, Paul's epistle to the Romans is the righteousness of God.  And he deals, he, it is one of those books that addresses this very thoroughly. The Holy Show of righteousness, God is righteous. Even when he judges the sinner, he's still righteous.  And then he makes righteousness available to the person who believes. And the person who believes can walk in righteousness and live a righteous life. So the whole aspect of God's righteousness given to man and man being able to walk in righteousness is addressed in the book of Romans, probably like no other book. You don't find this kind of treatment of righteousness in any other episode. And one last thing that we want to highlight about the book of Romans before we start going into it is, like we said earlier, we probably find only in Romans, and this has to do with Romans chapters 9 through 11 treatment of Paul addresses the relationship between Jews and Gentiles or Israel and the church. What is God doing? And where do these two people, Israel and the church, where do they fit in what God is doing? And so in Romans chapters 9 through 11, Paul addresses that. And like I mentioned earlier, we probably don't see this kind of treatment anywhere else in the New Testament of this whole subject of Jews and Gentiles. So that's a very interesting part to study in the book of Romans. I'm going to discover a little bit more and then we will have some time for questions. So why did Paul write to the believers at Rome? And what was his motivation? One, we can see that he felt personally connected to the believers at Rome. Even though he had not been there as yet, and even though he was not the one who started the church in Rome. Most of the other episodes that Paul wrote, you know, but we see Ephesians, Galatians, Thessalonians, Philippians, other than Colossae, other than the one to Colossians. Mostly other episodes Paul wrote were written to people who he had direct contact with churches that he had established. And so he felt a great sense of responsibility to them. But these two episodes, the one to the Colossians and one to the Rome, were to people that he did not directly minister to in the sense that he didn't go and start these churches. But he had influence on the people who were in leadership there. So for the church in Colossae, Paul had a strong relationship with Philemon. He had a strong relationship with Epaphras, and he was the one who led Onesimus, Philemon's slave. He was the one who led him to the Lord. So Paul had a good relationship with key people from the church in Colossae. And so he could write to them. He had a great heart for them. Similarly for the church in Rome, we know that he worked closely with Aquila and Priscilla. And so he probably felt connected to the believers at Rome through Aquila and Priscilla, because they were in some form of leadership with the believers at Rome. And so that heart felt connection was there. And we can also see that Paul had been praying for these people, whether the believers in Colossae and also the people in Rome, he had been praying about them.  So he's been praying for them. And so that could be another important aspect of his heart for the believers at Rome. And lastly, as we also mentioned, he may have had a desire to come and impart to them some spiritual gift. And we will see this in Romans chapter one. And we will read that once we get into the first chapter. Okay. So he had a desire to come in and impart to these believers at Rome and minister to them. And perhaps some lesser reasons was why he was writing to them was, you know, maybe just to let them know that that's his plan to come, prepare them for his visit to enjoy their company spiritually. And maybe he said, you know, I could be helped by you on my journey to Spain. So maybe he said, guys, you know, you can help me fulfill this mission that I have for Spain. So maybe these were some of the other motivations there in writing. Okay. So let me pause here for now. And any, any thoughts, let me go back here to the meeting. Any thoughts, any questions, any comments or we move forward. Any thoughts, any questions? All good. Everyone's with me so far. Okay. Okay. So, okay. So this is just, you know, this background information. So we understand what's happening. Right. So let me. Okay. So I think everybody's following. Right. So let's go back to everywhere. Right. Sorry. I need to share this. Okay. All right. So something to keep in mind as we start reading from chapter one, going to the book of Romans is there is divine inspiration, but we also see human expression. So we know the Holy Spirit inspired scripture. We also know that Paul himself was a scholar. He was a Pharisee. That means he had been really trained in scripture. He had studied under the best Hebrew teachers under Gamaliel. So Romans is very scholarly in nature. It's, you know, when you read it, it's like you're chewing on something really, really solid. It's, it's not, you know, there's not too many like stories or exhortation type of things. It's, it's very scholarly. There's a lot of logic. There's a lot of reasoning that we find in almost every chapter through Romans. Right. So there's a very scholarly element to Romans that we will see as we journey through it. Secondly, we also find that there is a lot of reference to Old Testament scripture or Old Testament concepts in Romans. And this again is because Paul himself was an Old Testament scholar of the Old Testament scriptures. And so as he's writing here, of course, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit is bringing out things from the Old Testament and making it, you know, helping us New Testament believers or, you know, people on the other side of the cross understand the meaning of all of those things. And so you'll find a lot of language references to Old Testament scripture in the book of Romans. And Paul does that in many of his writings. And so this is something very important. And then also we need, of course, we need to keep in mind some of the local context, things that were happening, which we have mentioned, which is there is, you know, there are Jews and Gentiles in the church at Rome. Right. So there are Jewish believers who, of course, will be thinking of, OK, I've embraced Jesus, but what about Judaism and what about Israel? Then there are Gentile believers who come in and who would want to know, OK, I'm embracing Jesus, but I have Jewish brothers and, you know, our brothers, brethren here. Am I becoming part of Judaism or, you know, what is that whole relationship? So he's trying to, he has to address both people, people who are coming from different backgrounds and let them understand the Christian faith and grow together in the Christian church. So that's another, that's the local context that Paul also has to address. Right. And lastly, something to keep in mind is this. When Paul wrote Romans and not just Romans, but in any of the letters that he wrote, or in fact, the entire scriptures, they were not written in chapter and worse, but it was one letter Paul was writing. So as with every expression of thought, sometimes we say something initially in order to build up that thought later on. So what we must do is we must be forward looking. And what we interpret in the beginning should be aligned to what is stated later on about the same thing. So, for example, if Paul says something in chapter one, he introduces something, but he's going to continue to build on that say in chapter four or chapter five and we'll give examples on this. Then how we interpret what he said in chapter one should stay aligned to what he has developed in chapter four and chapter five on the same thing. So that's the forward look. Also the backward look is important, which is when we are in chapter four and chapter five on the same thing, how we interpret chapter four and chapter five should stay aligned to how it was initially introduced in chapter one. So that's the backward look. That means in order to correctly interpret things, we need to maintain a forward look and a backward look so that things are interpreted correctly. Otherwise, if you just read something in isolation and we are not, you know, we often say, read the context, you know, if you're not keeping the broad context or the entire letter, then it's easy to take something and, you know, misinterpret it. It is not aligned to the initial introduction of that thought. Neither is it aligned to the future development of the thought. And so it is easy to misinterpret something when you take it in isolation. So we have to maintain the forward look and the backward look throughout Paul's episode and we will explain that we will see examples of that as we go along. So in closing of this introduction and of just two minutes and then we have to stop for the session. You know, what can we expect from this study of Romans? First, we're going to get a clear understanding of the gospel and as how Paul develops that we get a clear understanding of what the gospel of Jesus Christ is. And secondly, we're going to receive truth that will re-transform our lives, especially when he teaches us about grace, when he teaches us about righteousness, when he teaches us about the power of the cross, and when he teaches us about the work of the Spirit. And these are life-transforming for us as believers that when we understand that our lives will be transformed. It is like, okay, there is doctrine, there is teaching, but this teaching that Paul gives to us in Romans is going to change our lives. And that's the whole purpose of the teaching of the truth, which is to bring about transformation. And that will happen to us as we go through Romans. And lastly, we're going to experience the power of the Holy Spirit coming through his word, because the Holy Spirit is the source of the scriptures. He's the inspiration behind the scriptures.  So as we go through this study, apply it to yourself. Take time to soak it into yourself and then maybe you may be leading a life group or you may be ministering in church context. Try to share some of these things. And one of the beautiful things is when you're able to explain something to somebody, it means you have understood it well. And if you can make it very clear to somebody else, it means you understand it very clearly. So I would encourage you to have a small group where you can discuss and explain it. And if you are able to explain it, it means you've understood it very well and it's transforming your life and affecting your life, okay? So let's pause here. That was just the introduction. And so Kiran, I didn't understand your comment that I'm seeing in the chat. Are you asking where did Paul get the revelation? I'm sorry, I didn't understand your question that you've typed in the chat, Kiran. Sir, Paul got all revelation and Paul wrote so many books and so many clear explanations, so clear. So how did Paul receive and Paul wrote all books? Right, so your question is where did Paul, how did he receive revelation? So we know that the Lord Jesus revealed things to Paul. So he mentions this in quite a few places, for instance in 1 Corinthians chapter 11 and verse 23. 1 Corinthians 11, 23 Paul says, for I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you. You know, 1 Corinthians 11, 23. Now of course he is talking about the Lord supper, but it's a clear indication to us that Paul received by revelation things he wrote. He again mentions this in Galatians chapter 5, sorry Galatians chapter 1, verses 11 and 12. Galatians 1, 11 and 12. Thank you, Roshan, for writing the scriptures there. Galatians 1, 11 and 12. He says, I make known to you the gospel brethren, which was preached by me. By me it's not according to man, for I neither received it from man nor was I taught it, but it came to me through the revelation of Jesus Christ. So what Paul is saying is he's saying, you know, brothers, the gospel that I'm preaching and whatever I'm preaching, I didn't receive it from some man. But he says, it came to me through what Jesus revealed to me. Right? So everything Paul wrote, he says, I didn't learn it from some man, but Jesus revealed to me and I wrote it. So that's very powerful. Now, of course, when Paul wrote it, he was a scholar himself. So, you know, he got the Lord would have worked through his scholarly abilities. But the truth was what Jesus revealed to him and Paul wrote it, you know, with with his abilities, God had given to him. So the answer is, you know, these things were revealed to him by the Lord Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit.  Okay. It's time for a break. Welcome. Let's just take a quick break. Right now. 10 minutes break will be back in 10 minutes. And we'll pick up and get into chapter one. Okay. Thank you, everyone. I'm going to stop the recording and please go for your break. Thank you.