OC professor inspires students to study the Bible with a new perspective.

Grant Testut, associate professor of the Old Testament, “gamifies” course to increase enthusiasm for the subject.

Photo courtesy of oc.edu

Oklahoma Christian University’s Bible course, Introduction to History of the Bible, has a new twist thanks to Associate Professor of Bible Grant Testut. Over the summer, he inspired his students to dive into the Bible through a “gamified” course through Honors Summer Academy.

 Over a five-day period, the course discussed the composition, canonization, transmission, translation and reception of the Bible, focusing on the book’s  journey towards its final draft. Before the course started, the students were instructed to read “Wide as the Waters” by Benson Bobrick.

Each evening, the students were offered a choice on which path they could take, which would impact the student’s character class at the end of the course. 

Testut explained that a gamified pedagogy is not a new concept for him--when teaching a previous class in tandem with Chris Rosser, OC’s theological librarian, they chose to utilize a gamified teaching approach to switch the students’ focus from earning a grade to actually learning about the Bible. 

He applied a similar approach in his course Introduction to History of the Bible. 

“The students showed great enthusiasm from the very first day until the last,” Testut said. “They were especially excited about being assigned a character class toward the end based on the choices they had made throughout the week. I could tell that the students really took on the challenge of exploring the intricacies of the Bible's history and were willing to be stretched in their understanding of what the Bible is.” 

Testut took every chance he was offered to teach the students to think for themselves. 

“Even after they had passed all the tests on the adventure, they were presented with one final decision over which of two treasures they would choose as the reward for their valiant efforts,” he said. “After our last class meeting, the students came up to me and asked whether they had chosen correctly and what the outcome of the other choice would have been. I simply smiled and said, ‘What do you think?’"