As churches in oral-majority contexts grow rapidly, leadership development faces challenges due to limited literacy and the high cost of training. Timothy Strauss examines how TheWell, a WiFi-based media tool, enables low- and non-literate believers to access and facilitate Bible and leadership training. Using an experimental case study with a qualitative approach, his two-phase study demonstrates that effective instructional design and local facilitators empower learners to teach others, showing that technology can bridge educational barriers and expand leadership capacity in high-orality reliant contexts.

Formal Learning

Formal learning is learning typically provided by an education or training institution, structured (in terms of learning objectives, learning time or learning support) and leading to certification. Formal learning is intentional from the learner’s perspective.

Holistic Communication:
Teaching like Jesus

Training in orality, ranging from workshops to webinars, specific training for organizations, and advanced academic programs.

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ThM/PhD in Orality Studies

This program is the first of its kind in the world and addresses the growing demand for high-quality orality scholarship, research, and practice. It pairs global orality experts with Majority-World practitioners and scholars to ensure the best contextual, applicable, and diverse learning experience and research.

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Presenting Orality in Academic Contexts

by Larry Dinkins

This paper was originally presented at the Hong Kong 2013 ION Consultation. It gives insight into the challenges involved in incorporating a truly oral approach within a highly literate, propositional, and Western academic environment.

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Non-formal Learning

Non-formal learning is learning which takes place through planned activities (in terms of learning objectives, learning time) where some form of learning support is present (e.g. learner-teacher relationships).

Informal Learning

Informal learning is learning from daily activities related to work, family or leisure which is not organised or structured in terms of objectives, time or learning support; it may be unintentional from the learner’s perspective.

1. Definitions taken from ECTE‘s Recognition Guidelines. ︎

by Romerlito Macalinao

Foreword by Cameron Armstrong

While UNESCO heralds “Literacy Rates Continue to Rise from One Generation to the Next” (Fact Sheet No. 45 September 2017), there remains in the world a preference for nonliterate means of information processing and communication. Such people belong to oral societies that exist both in highly urban centers to the remotest islands and jungles of the world. These people are able to read but prefer to acquire, process, and communicate information by listening and/or watching. On the other hand, there are people who are unable to read and do not see the need to learn how to read, but still go about with life and continue to thrive since their earliest ancestors for centuries. In this global context, how is Jesus’ command to make disciples of all nations to be accomplished? While the field of Orality Missiology has been in existence for several decades with significant milestones in the work of missions and education, the pairing of Orality with neuroscience is a trailblazing and emerging field of inquiry and a fertile seedbed among innovators in theological education and strategists in Bible translation and the wider work of evangelization. This book will illustrate firsthand experiences on how the field of orality and neuroscience provide a critical pedagogy in advancing the Great Commission among oral societies.

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