The summer trimester at Winebrenner Seminary begins this week!
Final numbers are still settling, but we anticipate approximately 125 graduate students enrolled across multiple courses, in addition to students at the Toledo Correctional Institution and others participating through our partnership with the Churches of God, General Conference. The start of a new term always brings a renewed sense of energy. We are grateful for the many students who have invited us into their spiritual journeys.
As I shared in a previous post, I have the privilege of teaching a Doctor of Ministry course this summer titled Contemporary Theological Issues in a Pluralistic Culture. One of our first tasks will be to review the syllabus, including the books and readings that will shape our shared work. By the end of the trimester, students will have engaged more than 2,000 pages across several texts.
For the first half of the course, we will move through one book each week. Our conversations will consistently return to two questions:
Can the student demonstrate understanding of the text?
Can the student apply its insights within their local context?
These questions are simple, but they represent a meaningful shift. In many educational settings, progress is primarily measured by inputs such as time spent in class, pages read, assignments completed. But what if those measures, while useful, are not sufficient? What if they tell us less about learning than we assume?
An input-based approach might ask: Did the student read the assigned material?
An outcome-based approach asks: Does the student understand what was read? Can they use it? The distinction matters.
A student may complete every assigned page and yet struggle to interpret or apply the material. Another may engage more selectively but demonstrate clarity, insight, and contextual awareness. Traditional structures often reward the former and raise concerns about the latter. But perhaps we should pause long enough to ask a different question: what are we actually trying to cultivate? We talk repeatedly about a learner’s educational journey being “formational” – how are our practices actually forming them?
Within this course, we are taking what might be described as a constructive approach, or a more philosophical way of describing this is that we are working with a “constructive hermeneutic.” Rather than beginning with critique or deconstruction, we begin with a posture of engagement; asking, at least initially, what if the author is right? From there, we seek to build a basic framework of understanding before moving forward. This reorders critical thinking but doesn’t eliminate it. Before we can evaluate an idea, we must first understand it. Before we can challenge a perspective, we must be able to articulate it with clarity and care.
This approach also invites us to reconsider the role of time. While the course is situated within a 12-week trimester, the deeper goal is not simply to move through material on a fixed schedule. It is to create space for learners to engage ideas at a pace that allows for meaningful understanding and application. Our weekly meetings serve less as information delivery and more as opportunities for dialogue, clarification, and encouragement.
This reflects a broader shift we are continuing to explore. If the credit hour functions primarily as an input in which time is spent in a structured learning environment, then it should not serve as the sole organizing principle for educational design. Time matters, but it is not the same as learning.
What would it look like to take outcomes more seriously? What would change if progress were marked by how the learner demonstrates understanding, which is beyond only time completed? These items deeply interconnected to how we understand formation and aren’t merely technical questions.
Formation is not reducible to time. It involves growth, integration, and transformation – realities that unfold differently across contexts and individuals. When we rely too heavily on input-based measures, we risk overlooking these dimensions or assuming they are occurring simply because time has passed.
At the same time, this is not an argument for abandoning structure or disregarding time altogether. The question is not whether time matters, but how it relates to learning. Is it possible to hold both together? The answer may be yes, but not without deeper change. As long as time remains the primary mechanism by which a system defines progress, outcome-based learning will always be constrained. We can emphasize outcomes in our language, but if advancement is ultimately determined by time such as by trimesters completed, credits accumulated, or schedules maintained, then outcomes will continue to play a secondary role.
A more meaningful shift would require us to examine the broader system: how we approach grading and assessment, how we define satisfactory academic progress, how financial models like tuition and scholarships are structured, even how we think about concepts like the “incomplete.” These are not peripheral concerns; they are part of the organizational architecture that determines what truly drives learning.
Time-bound frameworks will continue to shape the system more than the outcomes we hope to prioritize unless we address those underlying structures. These are the kinds of issues and questions that emerge when we begin to examine not only our practices, but the assumptions beneath them. And they are essential if we hope to cultivate fresh expressions of theological education that are both faithful and responsive.
This brings us to an even deeper layer of the conversation. The distinction between inputs and outcomes shapes how define and ensure “quality” and is not limited to how we assess student learning. In many cases, quality is inferred from inputs. A course is assumed to be “master’s level” because of the amount of reading and writing required, the credentials of the faculty member, the academic background of the students, the duration of the course, and the organizational resources that surround it. These elements, as inputs, do not demonstrate quality, which doesn’t mean they don’t matter. They just are indicators of those items under which quality might emerge.
Over time, these signals have become substitutes for the thing they are meant to represent. We often speak of “high-quality” programs when what we are really describing is a familiar configuration of inputs. But inputs, by themselves, do not ensure outcomes.
That kind of logic works well in controlled systems designed for uniform production. It is far less reliable when the focus is on human learning, formation, and transformation. In those contexts, outcomes cannot be assumed simply because the right ingredients are present. We must define and situate “quality” different if we are serious about these changes.
An outcome-based approach begins by asking if meaningful and genuine learning has taken place and does not begin by asking whether the appropriate inputs are present. It requires clarity not only about what we hope students will experience, but how we will recognize and assess that growth in ways that are both rigorous and contextually grounded. And the implications are significant.
Shifting from inputs to outcomes in the context of a single course is one step. But it also reveals a much larger reality: many of the systems we rely on are built on assumptions that deserve closer examination.
If we hope to cultivate fresh expressions of theological education, we must be willing to look beneath the surface and reconsider not only what we do, but how we define what counts. And, like formation, that work takes time.
- Brent C. Sleasman, President