COVID-19 brought disruption, loss and trauma to every community around the globe, but a lesser-known impact is the massive change it brought to theological education in the Majority World. Strangely, the pandemic lockdowns created a once-in-a-generation opportunity to lift the learning experience of hundreds of thousands of Bible college students through online education.
Our Bible college partners in the Pacific, Asia, Middle East, Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe quickly transitioned to e-learning in 2020. Now, they have moved forward with creating high quality online education programs that serve their local contexts and greatly extend the reach of their campuses. It would have been unhelpful for these regions to be flooded with Western online content. Local Leaders worked with our affiliates to help our partner colleges develop robust online education programs that are sensitive to each region.
Over five years, Local Online: A Global Strategy (LOGS) assisted more than 200 key Bible colleges and increased the number of online theological students by more than 10,000.
Your support helped our partner colleges change the landscape of online theological education for the Majority World. Scroll down to the bottom of the page to see the LOGS Projects that you can still contribute towards.
Note: Local Leaders received donations and pledges for over $5mil towards Local Online: A Global Strategy.
Capacity development for 125 colleges by providing hardware, software and connectivity to assist with online delivery of courses.
Lift the competence of faculty by creating new ‘ICETE Academy’ courses and running workshops for hundreds of faculty members globally.
Content creation through a new ‘ICETE Online’ platform, making videos and other resources available to assist local faculty to create high quality courses suitable to their context.
We worked with multiple mission organisations and dozens of experts in education and theology from the Majority World, including:
Since launching in October 2021, significant progress was made in assisting our partner colleges with their technological capacity and competence. Watch our 7-minute video from September 2023 highlighting the numerous advancements achieved within two years.
Read the editions of Local Leaders’ Prayer Alert magazine dedicated to telling the stories of how Local Online: A Global Strategy has progressed. You’ll love hearing from Bible college leaders in the Majority World about the challenges they have faced and the real difference LOGS has made to their faculty and students.
Spring 2023 - This edition gives an update on the progress of Local Online: A Global Strategy (LOGS). It is a joy to report that after just two years of the strategy, we have assisted the creation of over 8,500 new positions for students to study God’s word and train to be leaders for the church and society.
Summer 2021/2022 - This edition tells the story of cooperation that is happening around the world and the potential for thousands of faculty members to be upskilled through online education.
If you would like to discuss any elements of Local Online: A Global Strategy, get in touch with us.
Aim: To build on the IT capacity of our partner Bible colleges, allowing them to upgrade equipment and make online education programs possible. New enhancements will enable colleges to link with students enrolled in distance education programs with greater ease and accessibility. Local Leaders assists the colleges to upgrade IT, cameras, online books and journals and student IT capacity.
Aim: To develop pedagogy training courses for faculty to learn excellent online teaching methods. In partnership with ICETE Academy, new courses are being developed and regional workshops will be run. Bible college faculty from around the world will be able to access training that is sensitive to their context. The content will be translated into 10 languages. Local Leaders assists the colleges to access courses and provide coaching on e-learning methods.
Aim: To create extra resources for faculty to use when they create their online education courses. This will include a repository of video and other material hosted by ICETE Online. Key colleges will be invited to contribute to this repository, with the aim of producing 1,000 new video resources and extra material. All resources will be translated into 20 languages. Local Leaders assists colleges to develop new online training programs for social disruption to help mobilise leaders and churches.
