USD Magazine Spring 2022

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t this point, most peo- ple are all too aware that Zoom has its A GLOBAL COLLABORATION A Theology course brings students from Vienna and USD together by Kelsey Grey

Austria, was also interested. The pair decided to teach a class, leveraging the Zoom technology to teach a course focused on anti-Semitism and the Bible. Students from both USD and the University of Vienna would work together to meet and work as one class. Fuller is a specialist in the Hebrew Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls. His research has focused on the textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible, specifically the biblical and non-biblical Dead Sea Scrolls. Lange is also a specialist in Judaism, particu- larly anti-Semitism. It only seemed natural that the two would create and co-teach this particular course.

required to physically travel to the location with the students, take up residence and orient them to the area and how to get around,” says Fuller. But with Zoom, that was no longer the case. Fuller was intrigued by the idea of pushing the limits of higher education through virtu- al learning. His long-time friend and colleague, Armin Lange at the University of Vienna in

tool that’s expanding their edu- cational experience, providing increased resources, flexibility for students and valuable global interchange. Before the COVID-19 pan- demic, if you asked theology professor Russell Fuller if teaching a virtual course with students from both the United States and a European country was feasible, he would’ve laughed. “We would have been

challenges. The video confer- encing platform freezes when there’s a bad Wi-Fi connection, the mute button seems to be a challenge for some users, and a few folks have issues with proper etiquette for passing the proverbial online mic. But for one University of San Diego theology class, Zoom is a

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