If you've been teaching with only a bachelor's degree, you may have realized that it's time for something more: New strategies for boosting your students' learning, perhaps. A graduate degree, which could add a welcome increase to your paycheck. Or maybe you'd like to pick up the education courses your undergraduate major didn't include. You may even be yearning for fellowship with a broad range of specifically Christian educators who, like you, consider their teaching a ministry.

For such goals, the problems of distance, time, and availability can sometimes pose big hurdles. But if you're sensing a tug to start graduate school, take a good look at Southeastern's online Master of Education in Teaching and Learning, and watch those hurdles dissolve. Your courses for this program are as close as your keyboard and within a time frame that fits your needs.

Everything you need in a graduate course—an experienced and caring professor, an interesting assortment of students, a series of intriguing assignments, plenty of discussion and feedback—you can access from your own computer screen. Wear your grubbies, if you like; bring a bowl of popcorn; or set up your laptop at the closest coffeehouse. Southeastern's online experience fits smoothly into your daily life.

Through Blackboard, an interactive software platform, your Southeastern professor posts the syllabus, course assignments, and links to articles and videos. Interaction among class members happens via online discussion boards. You complete reflection papers and other assignments on your own, then e-mail them to your professor, who responds personally to your work.

Invariably, the question arises: "How can a person learn teaching methods online?" Beyond exploring theories of learning, examining current research on best practices, and analyzing day-to-day teaching experiences, your professors lead discussion on a variety of strategies, illustrated in carefully selected online videos. What's more, your online learning is active learning, in which you expand your repertoire of teaching skills by intentionally taking responsibility for that process. As you and your professors work together, you become proficient in team-based methods that actively engage students, such as small-group work, student-to-student feedback, and individual synthesis of learning, followed by sharing what is learned.

To help you refine skills such as classroom management and teaching for diverse learners, we address questions like these: "What does the research tell us about ways to build classroom communities?" "What methods help you use the affective domain (how students feel) to strengthen the cognitive domain (how students think)?" "If students assigned to a collaborative learning activity, such as a lab experiment or a report, are not staying on track, how can you nudge them back into interdependent work?"