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CCBR Classroom

FIXME program outline of core versus recommended versus elective courses, which to polish for Summer 2017

====== Updating the Pro-Life Classroom

Current CCBR classroom:

  • Strengths: good material, probably the best out there of any pro-life group
  • Weaknesses:
    • Essay format= not ideal for self-study or group study
      • How to present the material in a more effective, more engaging way?
      • Too linear, not ideal for group use or for an individual who wants to dive deeper into 1 topic
  • Improving it, moving towards a seminar system:
    • Keep the university course code system - a good format
    • Lesson/seminar-style modules
    • Polished content presented in such a way that it is easy to add to in the future, since we can’t update everything in 1 summer
      • lesson-plan style: something that works well for both self-study and for leading group discussion
      • Footnotes or links for deeper self-study e.g. “click here for the whole documentary on Emmett Till” or something
  • Ideas to increase engagement with the content and website:
    • Quizzes
      • Add a gamification element - *see if the apologetics exam has some stuff we could pull
      • Stack exchange
        • *would need to be monitored for pro-choice trolls
  • Objectives
    • Primary: polish up the core of it enough to make it useful for people with a moderate knowledge base e.g. campus leaders
    • “Program requirements”
      • Which seminars are “must do” for the core?
      • rank/prioritize
      • AND are any seminars missing?
        • E.g. would Culture Wars content be useful…?
        • *heart apologetics needs to be fleshed out
      • Assess core vs. elective, and figure out which stuff is way out of scope and not yet relevant
    • Eventual goal: have ALL of it polished and ready, including more obscure electives and stuff; we want the layout of the new classroom to be easy to add to, esp. as apologetics approaches change and get refined
    • What is attainable for the summer?
    • To put a different way, what would be most critical to have available in the fall?
      • have 3-4 modules which, when grouped together, could function for an intro apologetics workshop? Useful for XAA groups, campuses, etc. E.g.
        • Dialogue strategies - show, don’t tell – ask Q’s, tell stories – CG/A/Q – etc.
        • Science 101 - fertilization, HR argument, etc.
        • Philosophy 101 - personhood - SLED, human + x
        • Heart apologetics - majorly needs work
          • Ignorant vs. denial (vs. apathetic?)
            • Seek to understand, Love, Inspire, BeInspired
              • there is some great content on this on the CCBR website, but a lot of it is in the blog section
        • Social reform - AVP?
  • What else is out there?
    • Besides UTSFL classroom and CCBR classroom
    • Other good sources of apologetics material, strategy material, etc. that we can pull from
    • Websites
      • Secular Pro-Life http://blog.secularprolife.org/
        • Pros: there’s a ton of good content in here. Great links for further reading - they have short-and-sweet blog posts that explore 1 issue helpfully e.g. http://blog.secularprolife.org/2016/12/response-to-argument-from-investigation.html
        • Cons: it’s not topically organized, have to really hunt for stuff; also, because they have *so many* contributors, the content can vary in quality and/or in “purity” (e.g. some of the contributors support the rape exception, I think some support health-of-mother exceptions, but if we’re linking to specific posts then this shouldn’t be an issue)
      • LTI http://prolifetraining.com/resources/
        • Pros: some really good articles e.g. constructed vs. developing. Draw from the content but update the format
        • Cons: quite dated, has a biblical focus that isn’t as relevant to CCBR’s website
      • Equal Rights Institute https://blog.equalrightsinstitute.com/
        • Pros: has heart apologetics and dialogue strategies, unlike many other groups; one of the only groups to take relational/heart apologetics seriously; website is well-organized and has a variety of learning formats (videos, podcasts, articles)
        • Cons: the ERI approach doesn’t work as well in an activism/AVP context. They can be almost…too nice. Very focused on building friendships/relationships with pro-choicers, which is important in our daily lives but is impractical in say, a CC
    • Books

*Misc.

  • feedback from group leaders – over the summer and/or in the fall
    • Ex, beyond UTSFL/TAA and Lifeline/LAA: would NAA like to test out the content and give feedback? Tikvah for Ottawa group? Other campus leaders who’d be willing to provide feedback (Talia, Paul, etc.)?