This contribution to the ASA Teaching Resources Center syllabi and instructional materials for the sociology of religion is presented in two parts. First, I offer a plea to my colleagues in the sociology of religion to explore the benefits of using technology in the classroom. Second, I present some guidelines for utilizing the Internet for both in-class and out-of-class instruction

 The plea to explore technology takes the form of a brief autobiographical accounting of my own journey, which has been taken with hesitation and reluctance at many points. Looking back over this brief span of three years, it is clear that it has taken many turns that I could not have anticipated at the onset. But without hesitation, I can say the past three years have been the most rewarding in almost forty years of teaching.

 My presentation of guidelines for utilizing technology in instruction has three sections. First, I present a brief virtual tour of my own Internet course materials. Second, I offer some suggestions regarding how others may utilize these materials for their courses. Finally, I conclude with some thoughts about how we might work together to enrich the reservoir of instructional materials available, not only for teachers and students in North America, but literally, for students and teachers around the world.

 Confessions of a Recovering Technophobe.

Technology has never come easy to me. When I was younger, I called on friends to set up and show me how to work almost every electronic or mechanical product I ever carried home. When I got a little older, I called upon the technician or repairman for help. In this era that medicalizes virtually every human shortcoming, I guess it is appropriate to identify myself as a recovering technophobe.

 I haven't heard yet of any 12-Step groups for technophobes, but I have my own recovery program that might perhaps constitute a prototype if anybody wants to start such an organization. My antidote has been massive exposure to the source of the disease. I interact frequently with techies on their turf. An important component of my interaction with these gods of gadgets is a ritualized confession of both my fear and ignorance of technology. I'm not sure these confessions are essential to this interaction, but I feel it helps maintain a proper status relationship. By identifying my shortcomings, it is clear that I need help. But I always insist that they teach me how to do things, not do it for me. This isn't always easy. But, this way I learn, which instills at least a modicum of dignity. They, in turn, have the satisfaction of feeling they have contributed to the education of an ancient mariner who aspires to navigate in the perilous seas of high technology.

My journey into the world of high tech began rather innocently three years ago when my university announced a new program designed to encourage the use of technology in the classroom. I reasoned that my life might be easier and my classroom presentations more effective if I had a little time to organize and edit my bulging videotape library. A few months earlier I had seen a presentation using Power Point slides. I had no idea how those slides were created, but the presenter told me after his lecture that it wasn't difficult. I reasoned that creating lectures in this manner would force me to do a better job in organizing my presentations.

With little consideration of the implications of what I was doing, I wrote a proposal and became one of the first dozen Teaching Technology Initiative Fellows at the University of Virginia. So, there I was-ignorant as sin about technology and very uncertain of my ability to learn what I needed to know if I was to achieve my stated project goals. Nevertheless, as one among a dozen elite selected to lead one of the nation's fine public universities to the next level of technology utilization in the classroom, there was no turning back. Had I known the road ahead, I might well have never have taken the first step.

 The Teaching Technology Initiative was one of these experimental projects that had been designed to assure pre-program success. Ten of the twelve Follows were already well into utilizing advanced technology in the classroom. The project of my companion novice was to scan hundreds of slides for presentation is his course in African art history. Being able to throw away those slide carousels, that are so prone to jam, and replace them with digital images delivered over a local server was a big step forward for him, but not a particularly taxing project.

 Thus, of the twelve projects, the outcome of mine alone seemed in doubt. This possibility apparently had not escaped the director of the initiative. When I suggested that perhaps I should get a head start on the project during the summer, she readily agreed and showered me with tutorial assistance.

My project was somewhat ambiguous in its formulation and not particularly ambitious in conception. As I began to master the most rudimentary rules for using the gadgets, my sights soared. I recall the morning I walked into the multi-media laboratory with a box of materials to create a presentation on Shakers. I imagined a seamless presentation with Power Point lecture notes illustrated with pictures scanned from several books in my library and photos I had taken on a visit to Mount Pleasant Village in Ohio. All of this would be accompanied with an overlay of excerpts of Shaker music. And for good measure, I would digitize a piece of videotape I had captured from a human interest news story about two Shaker survivors who still resided in the Shaker Village in New Hampshire. It took the better part of the day for me to see, with my level of skills, I had set up about three weeks of work. The Shaker presentation was a marvelous idea, and I'm thinking that I might go back and work on it some more next summer. But in the summer of 1995, I wasn't ready for such an undertaking.

I spent a fair amount of time that first summer finding the proper balance between my increasingly ambitious presentation ideas, on the one hand, and my limited skills and time on the other. As the fall term approached, I had scanned hundreds of images from books, magazines, slides, pamphlets, and newspaper headlines in preparation for insertion into my lecture notes. I had learned Adobe PhotoShop editing and some of the materials I had created were, frankly, pretty good. But I had only a few lectures that were ready for presentation. Had the fellowship not provided for a teaching reduction to a single course, I would never have made it through that first semester.

The fall term began without an opportunity to become familiar with my classroom and rehearse presentations that required movement between slides, videotapes, Internet connections and, occasionally, a boom box for audio-tape. The building with the new high tech classrooms had been gutted and construction workers and technicians were frantically racing against the clock all summer to have the building ready.

I got my first crack as a simulated presentation on the evening before classes were to begin. On the morning of the first day of classes, I arrived about half-an-hour early. Underneath my computer console, flat on his back, was the same computer technician who had been there when I left at 11 p.m. the evening before. When I nervously inquired about whether the classroom would be ready, he assured me that everything was under control. I don't know how many times I asked for reassurance during that interminable half-hour, but with five minutes to go, and students appearing, I thought I detected a tone of doubt in his reassurance. We made it, and my opening presentation was delivered without a hitch.

I wish I could say that I soon became comfortable with my high tech classroom. As I approach the conclusion of my sixth semester teaching in a high tech classroom, I still get nervous at almost every transitional step along with way. In the beginning I frequently didn't know the difference between a technology failure and my ineptitude in making the stuff work properly. In the beginning, a technology failure, self-inflicted or otherwise, left me feeling utterly helpless and humiliated. I wanted to curse or cry out in anguish.

I still get frustrated when technology fails, but I no longer experience anxiety or a sense of rage. I have come to recognize that technology failures or glitches are part of life (at least for now). I joke about technology, and have learned a self-effacing comment can go a long way toward smoothing over the disruption of a presentation caused by failed technology. Students readily understand jokes about failed technology. Contrary to the myth that today's students are all techies, most of them are not. They too are struggling to apply the exploding technologies of the late twentieth century to their learning. So, when something doesn't work, I try to make light of the occurrence and then move on as smoothly as possible to a different mode or presentation.

Unanticipated Problems Always Present New Opportunities.

 As I reflect back upon all the years I spent watching televangelists for my research, I have to confess that Robert Schuller's positive thinking, or possibility thinking as he calls it, has impacted my consciousness. In moderation, there probably really is a place for bumper sticker theology in all of our lives. "Inch by inch, anything's a cinch," is probably not a bad attitude to bring to the world of technology.

 As my first year of instructing with technology progressed, I faced seemingly unending problems. Some were of such a nature that I would go home at night and contemplate as to whether there might be some graceful way to bail out. Each time, when faced with solving a problem, I came to realize that the crisis had generated an opportunity. Recognizing, and then acting upon, the opportunity created by problems has unquestionably had a greater impact on the direction of my teaching than anything that was structured into the teaching technology proposal.

 Two examples of unanticipated problems I encountered may be helpful in understanding how my New Religious Movements Home Page came to be, and how this experience has impacted my teaching of other courses. The first really big crisis I encountered was the realization that students had became slaves to copying everything in my lecture slides to the point that they were not paying the slightest bit of attention to what I was saying. The second problem arose from my attempt to draw upon Internet resources to help students understand the fierce war between religious movements and their adversaries. When I began this exercise, anti-cult materials so overwhelmed everything else on the Web that I feared I was going to end up with a whole class of anti-cultists.

The creation of a class web page seemed to point the way to the solution of both of these, as well as other, problems. The creation of a class page was initially undertaken with modest expectations, and for the sole benefit of the thirty-four students I was instructing. As the web page developed, the potential for engaging students in a unique learning adventure became evident. By requiring students to create a web page about a religious movement, and holding them to high standards, I found I was able to engage them in the multiple objectives of learning theory, substantive information about a group, technology, and a sense of professionalism. But I jump ahead of the story just a bit.

The Power of Power Point Lectures. I eventually got the hang of efficient creation of Power Point slides. Most of my lecture presentations involved pretty detailed notes; typically 40-60 slides for a seventy-five minute class. My slides had additional lecture points that were hidden from the students' view, and I had hidden slides that addressed concerns that I thought students might query me about.

The first benefit of creating slide presentations was a heightened awareness that my lecture notes were not nearly as well organized as I had imaged. Getting materials organized with logical progression, without leaving anything important out, proved to be a time consuming task. I have no doubt that this was a very important step in improving the quality of my lecture presentations.

What I did not anticipate was the degree of intensity that students exhibited in getting the content of every slide into their notes. My efforts to get students to put their pencils down were to no avail. Early that first term I expressed my concerns in a meeting of the TTI Fellows. "Put your notes up on the Internet after each lecture," one colleague urged. "If he did that, why would anyone ever come to class?" replied another. That problem could be solved with required attendance another suggested. I rather appreciated the reply of a chemistry colleague who said, "they'll come to class because Jeff knows a whole lot more interesting things about religious movements than is contained in those slides." At least I hoped he might be right.

At that point, I didn't have a web page, so distributing my lecture notes on the web didn't seem like a viable solution. So I continued to struggle with the problem. I was leaning toward making the notes available, but the thought that this might impact attendance was, frankly, a bit scary.

During the intercession between the fall and spring terms, I created a modest web page with a syllabus and a few readings that were accessible with a password. Early in the spring term, I took the plunge and made my notes available to my students on the web site. This happened only after I staged a precipitating event that was calculated to move me off dead center. I carefully planned a presentation in which I would talk about one subject while popping slides on another. The Power Point slide presentation was my lecture on social science explanations for why people leave religious movement. My oral presentation was on the anti-cultists take on the same subject. As I spoke, the students dutifully copied every word they could write down from the slides. I was even interrupted once and asked to go back to the previous slide. I don't know how long I proceeded with this charade before I stopped to test my hunch. (It was probably only a few minutes, but it seemed like an interminable exercise at that time). When I finally paused and asked a question, my deepest suspicions were confirmed. No one had any idea that I was talking about a different subject.

So, with considerable trepidation, the lecture notes were made available to students on the class web site. Initially I just put up the Power Point slides with their highly variable font sizes. They weren't very pretty, but they got the job done. That attendance didn't seem to be impacted by this move was not really surprising, but it was certainly gratifying. The following summer I restructured the notes so students would have a somewhat condensed version of my lectures.

I don't have a before and after control, so I don't know that students are doing better on exams. I do know that the notes are popular with students. I encourage students to read the notes before class. Many arrive to class with a copy of the notes and some come to class early and print a copy. Now, instead of cramping their fingers trying to get everything written down, I often observe that students use highlighters, and add marginal or in-text notes. Occasionally a student will arrive to class early and ask if I would expand in more detail on some particular point in a lecture.

The lecture note crisis probably would not have happened if my Power Point slides had only been the bare bones outline. But as it turns out, students now have a much better set of notes from which to study than most would have had if they had taken the notes themselves. Further, if I had created only brief outlines, I probably would not have had the experience of working through the development of a set of notes that were better organized. I believe that my own lecture notes in student's hands assure that they will have a better chance to master material I believe to be important.

Another unanticipated consequence of putting the notes on the class web page was that I began to receive communications from people who had found them while searching the Internet. While I knew in the abstract that the class web site was accessible to anyone in the world, it never really occurred to me that anyone outside my class would actually find and read them. In the beginning, I didn't receive a lot of correspondence, but enough to heighten my consciousness to the fact that my notes and thoughts were available to anyone who might wish to check out the site. Most of the correspondence was positive and complementary of my efforts. Some came from people who wished to express their disagreement with my perspective. And, there were also some that challenged my information and provided documentation to back up their challenge. Needless to say, these communications had profoundly important implications for how the web page and my approach to teaching would unfold.

The awareness of a global audience, however small, heightened my awareness of the necessity of presenting factual information. This knowledge would figure very prominently when students started creating web pages that would become a part of the class page. It gave me leverage to demand that they carefully document their research. Equally important, awareness that people from around the world visit the site has helped instill a sense of professionalism on the part of my students.

Discovering the World Wide Web. I had never heard of the big WWW or Netscape, which had not yet gone public, when I began my teaching technology fellowship. It didn't take long to discover that in its infancy, the World Wide Web was a virtual war zone for many new religious movements. Since an important part of the study of cults and sects is to understand their conflict with adversaries, the prospect of being able to observe this live, on-line struggle seemed to me very exciting.

Beyond the recognition that this movement/counter-movement struggle was raging on the Internet, it didn't take much longer to see that the war zone was not a level playing field. Nowhere was this more evident than the case of Scientology and its adversaries. For all their wealth, lawyers, and commitment to aggressively pursue their enemies, the Scientologists were no match for the guerrilla tactics of their adversaries on the Net. I found literally scores of anti-Scientology sites and Scientology didn't even have an official home page. The "unofficial" Scientology site, under the name Lisa Goodman's Home Page, contained lots of material, but good luck trying to find it on a search engine with all the registered anti-Scientology pages. A few Scientologists sought to defend their faith on "alt.scientology," the Internet's most notorious brawl room, but it was a hopeless battle.

Few new religions fared much better than Scientology. Like Scientology, they either didn't have an official web site or, if they did, they were not particularly effective instruments for presenting themselves. And, with few exceptions, neither official pages nor sites created by members viewed the Internet as place to do battle with adversaries. Most of the cults and sects were reluctant to participate in the war. As a result, the Internet cult wars turned out to be pretty much one-sided ambushes. The more fortunate New Religious Movements (NRMs) were smaller groups who, by virtue of their smallness, did not have many apostates.

From my own searching, I was convinced that it was possible to locate enough different types of sites to provide a balanced perspective of most groups. But it was also clear that the disproportionate amount of negative materials made this a challenge for students. While I could quickly determine whether a friend or adversary of any group created a site, that capacity to discern was frequently not an ability possessed by the novice student.

To facilitate students' using the Internet to learn about religious movements, I determined that I would produce a listing of hyperlinks for each of several groups that would be divided into four categories:

 (1) official (and "unofficial") home pages;

(2) friendly pages (typically created by members of the group);

(3) anti/counter pages (pages intended to undermine the credibility of a group); and

(4) scholarly/analytical pages.

This didn't seem to me to be a very difficult task but, with everything else including learning how to efficiently create web-page content, searching for sites and getting them up on my own page was going to be a time consuming task. I recruited a couple of students who enrolled for research credit the next term to help with this task. As it turned out, both were not much more skilled than I with computer technology. As a result, we didn't have much to show for our efforts at the end of the term.

In spite of this set back, I continued to believe that the Internet had rich potential for being a learning resource. The task, as I saw it, was to locate and then organize materials so students could use them. I created a prototype for a series of pages about different groups. Each page would have a common presentational format beginning with a Profile. This Profile would cover the essential information about the group: name, when created, by whom, why, how, etc. The Profile would conclude with a succinct statement of the unique features of the group's beliefs. This would be followed with a set of abstracted hyperlinks. The final feature of the presentation would be a print bibliography. I didn't envision these presentations as being comprehensive, but rather an effective means for gaining a good overview of many religious movements. And for those who are interested, the site provides a gateway to far more comprehensive resources.

I identified about twenty-five new religion groups as candidates for this task. The next fall term I offered students an opportunity to create a web page as a term project. I strongly urged participation in this undertaking and offered incentives for those who would participate. A little more than half of the class signed up to work on a group, but several did not complete the assignment. At the end of the term, those who had participated were highly laudatory of the exercise. For them, the reward was both the creation of a web page of their own and discovering how the Internet can be an effective instrument for learning. In the course evaluations, two students wrote nearly identical comments to the effect "don't let the wimps off the hook; make the web page development a requirement."

As I considered this counsel, I realized that making the assignment a requirement would fairly quickly organize an abundance of materials that students in subsequent semesters could use to enrich their learning. It would also address a latent embarrassment that I had lived with from the first day I walked into this 34 seat high tech classroom-rows of computers that students were only using when they came to class early to do e-mail.

The classroom full of computers had not been something that I had anticipated when I became a TTI Fellow. For reasons I still don't understand, the technology people in my university equipped the very large lecture halls with lots of technology, but there still is not a single classroom in the 50-75 range that is equipped with the technology delivery capabilities I require. The smaller high tech classrooms were conceived and designed as laboratories. Since I had determined some years earlier that I would not teach large courses anymore, my only option was a classroom full of computers

Proceeding with making the web page development a course requirement, I now had a use for the computers. But once again, I had created new problems I had not fully considered. The optional assignment to develop a web page came with the expectation of attending training sessions outside of class time. By making the assignment a requirement, I was pretty much committed to taking regular class time for instruction. I was reluctant to take any class time away from the theoretical and substantive content, as there is never adequate time to cover everything I would like to do in a term anyway. But I really didn't have a choice. The second problem was more serious. I was still struggling to learn HTML and web page construction myself. I was certainly not qualified to offer this technical instruction. The thought of doing so was nothing short of terrifying.

While I was pondering how to deal with this, I picked up the materials of a second year student named Craig Hirsh who it turned out had developed an astonishingly fine web page. There were some 25-30 in-text hyperlinks, a navigation bar to guide the reader through the page, detailed abstracts to the off-site links, and even a search engine to explore the Internet. Wow! I was impressed. I hastened to write Craig a note of congratulations for earning an A+ for the course. I paused for a moment and then proceeded to invite him to help me with the course the next term in the role of technology instructor. He was online when I sent the message and immediately replied his acceptance. I've learned a lot from this undergraduate student in the past three semesters and he deserves a good bit of the credit for what it has become. When Craig Hirsh graduates next year, he will become Webmaster Emeritus. In the years ahead, I hope I am fortunate enough to have other students whose contributions to the web site will merit this honorary status.

From Class Resource to Global Resource.

Over the past two years, the Religious Movements Home Page has evolved from a simple page designed to service the learning needs of my students at the University of Virginia to a resource that is accessed from all over the world. As the page developed, the increasing volume of mail gave some hint of the fact that people all over were accessing the page. But creating a page that would become a leading site for accessing information on religious movements was not something I self-consciously set out to achieve. It just sort of happened.

A turning point of my own consciousness of a considerable readership occurred with the Heaven's Gate tragedy. I awoke that morning, as I normally do when the clock radio connects me to NPR's Morning Edition. The voice was familiar, but it was not one of the program's regulars. "What do we know about this group," the reporter asked. "Not much," the voice replied. "We're in the process of finding out right now." Unlike my usual slow pace of waking, I came straight up out of bed. I recognized the voice as that of Gordon Melton. For twenty years I had sought to find a cult or sectarian movement that Gordon didn't know about. And every time I thought I had found one, I was disappointed to learn that he was way out in front of me. I didn't yet know that there had been a mass suicide, but I knew if Gordon didn't know about the group, it must be esoteric indeed.

I arose quickly, popped a tape in my video recorder, and managed to get maybe fifteen minutes of news coverage before I had to leave for school. I brought the tape to class and prefaced our viewing with the comment that neither Gordon Melton nor anyone else seemed to know anything about the group. "If you want to try and figure out the identity of this group, how would you go about it?" I asked.

Before we got very far into viewing the tape, I noted that several students had opened their computers to the Profile on UFO Cults on the class page. A few minutes later a student called me to her computer and pointed to the Heaven's Gate link. In the early morning news coverage, the media had identified the group as Higher Source which, of course, turned out to be the name of their business. But one of the videotapes we listened to also used the name "Ti" as one on the group leaders. The student who had created the UFO Cult page had noted in the Heaven's Gate abstract that the leaders of the group sometimes went by the names of Doe and Ti, but they formerly had been known as Bo and Peep.

Bingo! I recognized immediately that my student had identified the group. It was not surprising, however, that neither the experts nor the media were able to identify the group for the better part of a day. The initial information with respect to the age (18-24) and gender (all male) was so off base that even Rob Balch, a sociologist who had studied the group in its formative years did not recognize it as "his group."

The Heaven's Gate web site was almost immediately unplugged by the authorities and then reloaded on a "secret" URL later that day. Thanks to some crafty sleuthing by Bill Bainbridge, we learned the identity of the new location and had the site mirrored on the class page that same day. Our curiosity to know whether we were getting some action led to the quick installation of an access counter that we had been considering for some weeks. Immediately upon installation, and for several days to follow, our access was bouncing in the range of 5,000-10,000 accesses. (Access refers to the number of times another computer comes to a site; "hits" refers to how many locations on the site are visited. On average, we get about four hits per access).

To our astonishment, it wasn't the Heaven's Gate mirror that was attracting attention. There were qickly lots of Heaven's Gate mirrors on the Internet. Several major newspapers mirrored the site and identified the location in their reporting of the story. Hence, there was no reason that our mirror of Heaven's Gate would account for our heavy traffic. Furthermore, there are literally thousands of UFO pages. We discovered later that only a few of these sites bear the identity of a "UFO cult" page. The web spiders of several leading search engines had earlier found our page, which is so titled. Thus, when people searched on "UFO Cults," and a lot of people did those days, our page was on the top, or near the top, of sites identified by the search engines.

Once Heaven's Gate had dropped out of the news, we were surprised to see that we were still getting a steady access in the range of 1,000 to 2,000 virtually every day. By commercial standards, and the fads of popular culture, the New Religious Movements Home Page is certainly not a large site. As an academic site, the cumulative access is impressive. Our access statistics roll over every day, so we don't have cumulative figures. But it is clear that in the course of a year a lot of people have made at least a cursory examination of the site. The large majority of all accesses come from outside of the University of Virginia domain (>95%). Almost every day there are accesses from 15 to 20 countries. So far, we have identified visitors from more than 85 countries.

I am delighted to have been the principle in the creation of the New Religious Movements Home Page. I am inspired by its success and aspire to create a page that will have even greater impact, and a page that will have utility for all who seek to understand religion from the perspective of sociology. This requires both a critical assessment of what I have attempted to accomplish to this point, as well as sober reflection on the specific question of how the site might be useful to colleagues who teach sociology of religion courses. I turn to these matters in the next section of this paper.

Where We Are and Where We Hope to Go

Without my students, this page would never have been possible. It is their page every bit as much as it is mine. As the shepherd of their labor, my possession of detailed knowledge of some groups falls short of what it should be. The result is that not every bit of information on the page is completely accurate. My students will attest to the fact that I push them hard of "get it right" but sometimes their resources, and/or interest, are lacking. When this happens, the responsibility is mine, both to discover and correct errors.

I was a little apprehensive when I first invited readers to communicate with me if they found errors in our work. I imagined all manner of ill-tempered souls seeking to draw me into nit-picking theological disputes, or apostates bent on criticizing our work because it did not contain the anti-cult line on a particular group. With some notable exceptions, this has not happened. Most critical communication seems genuinely motivated with helping us present factual information. And most who communicate express appreciation for our efforts to provide objective information. For this response, I have been enormously grateful. Each time I enter a correction, I am mindful that yet another person has become a collaborator in the enterprise.

In my mission statement, I tried to indicate why sociologists of religion view the study of new religions as so important to the development of a theory of all religions. I also argued that the "virtual reality" of the Internet is no substitute for experiencing religious movements in the flesh. Still, the Internet does provide unique possibilities to get closer to movements than is generally possible with textbooks and journals on the one hand, or mass media coverage on the other.

As more and more religious groups go on line with official home pages, we have the opportunity to access significant bodies of information about them, and how they see themselves. Their friends and their adversaries are also present with web sites that can also be very informative. I personally tire quickly of the debates that fill my mail box whenever I log onto a list-serve or news group, but this form of communication offers important information that students of religion need to grasp.

Most sites also provide the opportunity for one-on-one communication with members of movement groups, as well as those who create opposition pages. A few sites put up mail boxes, and then seem never to bother to reply. This can be a little annoying, but I am surprised by the ease with which people can be approached via their web pages. Last term, one of my students published brief excerpts of a yet unpublished book by the leader of the group she was studying. It turned out that she had communicated with this person on as many as a half-dozen occasions.

I have encountered a lot of academics who don't want their students using the Internet because so much information "out there" is unreliable. Whenever I here this complaint, I always respond that this is one of the best reasons I can think of for sending students to the Internet for information. If our goal is to teach students to think for themselves, then we should want to expose them to situations where they know that they have to be able to discern the difference between facts, half-truths and irresponsible lies. Similarly, I want them to develop the capacity to discern the difference between a carefully documented argument and an opinion. In short, I think it is good that we send them out to encounter the world as they will find it when they leave the protected halls of academia.

The Internet is a wonderful place for students to encounter the world and develop the skills of critical thinking and discernment. The study of religious movements is a particularly valuable subject of inquiry to hone the skills of discernment because the content is so highly volatile. Most of the students I have taught over the past two decades come to my course with the presuppositions of the anti-cultists. This is not surprising. Why would we not expect students to mirror the dominant perspective communicated in the mass media? Most of my students readily grasp my theoretical perspective that views religious movements as a vital source for invigorating both faith and the broader culture. Once they leave my classroom, they will again be exposed to a steady diet of media coverage that views "cults" as a menace to culture. If I expect my students to carry what I teach them into life, it is critical that the menacing intolerance of anti-cultists be observed and analyzed.

The possibilities for web-based learning are only now beginning to become evident. We need to become self-conscious of the possibilities, and active participants in shaping this new learning environment. If we fail to do so, others who know much less about our subject of inquiry, will step in and organize information in ways that do not realize the potential of the electronic communications revolution we are currently experiencing.

Librarians gave us a system for organizing books and periodicals. They also made little boxes into which they stuffed information according to the organizational schema that they created. And then they placed these little boxes in high ceiling entrance halls to libraries. For generations we academics came to this spot in search of specific titles or a catalogue domain that we hoped would open to us a broader range of materials.

The quickness with which this gateway to knowledge has changed is nearly incomprehensible. Less than a decade after the mass conversion of library catalogues to electronic databases commenced, most of us don't even have go to our libraries to search. From our own desk, we can quickly search not only our own university catalogues, but also databases from the best libraries in the world. We can also read the best newspapers in the world without leaving our office. And, we have available specialized databases that are regularly updated on CD-ROMS that allow us to search efficiently for almost any subject imaginable. To an increasing degree, professional journals and articles from leading scholarly periodicals are on-line. At my university, and I'm sure the same is true for many of you, undergraduate students can, and do, access a vast number of primary data sets that only a short time ago were accessible only to the most sophisticated scholars.

All of this is made possible by the incredible electronic communications revolution we are now experiencing. The computer technicians have wired us into this revolution, and our librarians are doing a terrific job of helping us understand the possibilities for utilizing all these resources. We are truly being empowered in a ways that have never before been possible .

Our old ideas about going to the library are archaic. We will still go to the library, but learning to use the library today has an enormously different meaning than it did only a short time ago. Because of electronic searching, our students will find much more. And because they will find more, we can reasonably raise the level of our expectations of the kind of work they will do. We will still be valuable partners in helping them sort though and make sense of what they find, but only if we learn to use the new library technologies ourselves. Our challenge as users and teachers is to package the final products of the electronic communications revolution so that our students and we get the maximum benefit of all that technology has dropped at our doorstep.

In the second part of this paper I want to explore how technology has greatly expanded our possibilities for effective teaching. I will begin by examining the web-based instructional materials I have developed for my own course in new religious movements. Then I'll offer some thoughts about how others might utilize these resources. In the concluding section I'll explore some ways we might cooperate to create greatly expanded teaching resources.

Steps Toward Creating a Total Learning Environment.

 What I have tried to do with the New Religious Movements Home Page is to create a total learning environment. This characterization is, of course, an exaggeration, but it speaks to the goal of making accessible a wide array of learning resources at a single location.

 At the present time, students can access detailed lecture notes on approximately thirty subjects. Each lecture comes with on-line readings that are integrated with the lectures and a select bibliography for further exploration of the topic. These lectures cover a general theory of religion that includes the growth and development of new religions, historical assessment of important religious movements, and an examination of the most important religious movements of the 20th century. The opportunity to learn about specific religious groups is enhanced by more than 125 profiles of religious movements. Each profile includes a discussion of the group's distinctive beliefs and, when appropriate, a discussion of issue that have placed the group in tension with society.

 Another important feature of this learning environment is the structure of links that connect this site to literally thousands of pages on the Internet that deal with religious movement subjects. For each group profiled, we have attempted to identify the most important sites about the group. These links provide a gateway to literally thousands of pages of valuable reading material. For each hyperlink, students have developed abstracts about the content of the site at the other end. This helps the reader move more efficiently to explore his or her own interests and to determine whether it is useful to wait when a site is slow in downloading.

 Finally, for each group, we offer a select bibliography of both print and electronic resources.

 The typical lower-division university level course is taught with a textbook; upper-division courses often utilize several books and/or a series of articles. Articles are typically selected by the instructor and then either sold by a local vendor or placed on reserve in the library. Custom tailored readings, available for less than a generation, significantly augment the resources an instructor can place in students' hands. The Internet creates the opportunity to expand easy access to vast resources.

 The concept of total learning environment is a goal toward which we strive. Examination of the New Religious Movements site will verify the fact that we are making significant strides toward this goal. But it is also clear that our goal will never be fully attainable because knowledge keeps expanding, and the possibilities for delivery of new knowledge expand as well. Each new piece of material on the site and each new link increase the learning resources available to students and push us a little closer to the goal of a total learning environment.

 Viewed from another perspective, the total learning environment concept speaks to a way of reinventing the library as the repository of knowledge. Card catalogues have already given way to electronic data-bases of resources available through a library. Increasingly, these resources are not on a shelf in the library stacks, but are residing on a server half-a-world away, and accessible with the click of a mouse. And much that is worth knowing has not yet found its way into textbooks or even journal articles. Web-based learning can open the world of knowledge and ideas to everyone; not simply that knowledge which has achieved legitimacy by appearing in journals and books, but literally all knowledge.

 Some of us bristle when we consider the fact that anyone can publish on the Internet on any subject with no regard whatsoever as to the wisdom or validity of their thoughts. The capacity of the Internet to spread rumors, conspiracy theories and what most of us would consider just plain rubbish is astonishing. In the area of religious movements, this is no small concern. Religious intolerance, bigotry and hatred abound on the Internet and there is nothing we can do to unplug the computers of those who put it up. We can expose religious hatred for what it is, but more importantly, we can provide alternative perspectives.

 We are only beginning to understand how the Internet can become a global classroom, accessible to all at any moment. I can think of no higher priority than trying to understand how it works and how we who are committed to expanding and transmitting knowledge can use it effectively. I view the web site I have created with my students as one experiment in this learning process. I encourage others to join in creating web-based environments that will open new vistas for instruction and learning.

A Virtual Tour of the New Religious Movements Home Page.

 When a student walks into my course, they get a one-page printout of the front page of the New Religious Movements site. It includes the URL a welcome statement, and a navigation tool bar that identifies the resources on the site. In the first session I provide an introduction to the subject of religious movements. I offer only a brief overview of the syllabus and course requirements indicating that this information is detailed on the class web site. I conclude by telling students that if they found my presentation of the subject matter interesting, their next step in determining whether they wish to take this course is to spend a minimum of two hours examining the course resources to learn whether they really want to take the course.

 What follows in this presentation is a tour of the course resources that students find when they log on to examine the syllabus and related course materials. I include URLs in the text. If you are reading this paper in the ASA Teaching Resources Syllabus on the Sociology of Religion, I invite you to log on and go to the electronic version of this paper so that you can actually tour the site.

Syllabus. The course syllabus presents the lecture topics and readings assignments. Each lecture topic is hyperlinked to the lecture. Individual reading assignments are not hyperlinked, but are accessible by a link at the top of the page. (The reason for not linking each reading will be explained below). Course requirements can also be accessed from this page.

 Course Requirements. Over the years I have felt increasingly comfortable in codifying my course requirements in considerable detail. It lets the students know exactly what is expected of them, and it saves me the hassle of having to deal with students who want to customize the requirements on the fly to meet their own whims. At the beginning of the term I tell students that the requirements constitute a contract and if they don't like the terms they should find another course. I recognize this is a personal style that is not appropriate for everyone, but it works for me.

 Readings. With the exception of one short paperback book, all the required readings, and many of the recommended readings are available on line. At the present time, these readings are only available to my students by password. By placing the readings under password, we are effectively doing the same as placing a reading in the library on reserve. My university's legal counsel has determined that this satisfies the requirements of fair use for educational purposes. On the agenda of future tasks is to obtain permission from publishers to make these materials available for general use. Most of the readings are readily accessible in any good library. Obviously, the goal of a total learning environment would be enhanced if these materials were accessible to everyone on-line.

 Lectures. While my syllabus is highly structured, I tend to change the content some each semester. As a result, all of my lectures as well as several lectures on topics that are skipped in a given semester, are accessible to students. My introductory lecture on "Cults and Sects in America" offers an example of both the structure of my notes as well as the substance of my presentation.

 Extended Commentaries. In addition to my lecture note outlines, several short essays expand on key ideas in the course. While "cult" and "sect" are critical concepts for scholars of religious movements, the use of these concepts in popular culture is highly pejorative. In this essay I define the concepts and try to spell out a rationale for their use in spite of the prejudicial character of popular usage. Another commentary expands on the distinction between anti-cult and counter-cult organizations. These and similar essays have been stimulated by communications received from visitors of the page. This feature will be expanded as time allows.

 Profiles of Religious Movements. The Profiles were substantially created by the students of the course. At the conclusion of the Spring Term of 1998 we had approximately 130 Profiles. Each Profile has a common presentation format which includes: (1) background information about the group and its founder, (2) beliefs of the group, (3) discussion of issues that have placed the group in tension with the broader society, (4) links to the most significant resources about the group on the Internet, and (5) a bibliography including both print and electronic resources.

 The best Profiles are testimony to the ability of undergraduate students to do professional work. Other pages are clearly candidates for upgrade and enrichment another semester. At the time they were created, every Profile page provided a guide to best resources available on the Internet about the particular group. We now have more than two thousand links from these Profiles. Monitoring for dead links and locating new sites are real challenges.

Links to Religious Movement Resources Outside the Class Page. If the 2,000 links beyond this site are a headache to keep updated, they constitute a gold mine for accessing Internet resources on religious movements. Search engines can often be very helpful in locating resources on some religious movements. Often, however, search engines produce very thin results even when the array of materials available is pretty rich. In developing their pages, students are obliged to use all the major search engines and to become skilled in using advanced search strategies. I sometimes discover that students have not really done their homework, but when the links from a Profile page are thin, it usually means that there isn't much "out there" about the group. Until such time that much more efficient search engines are developed, the links provided on the Profile pages are the best place to begin an Internet search.

Search Engines. The search engine on our page is called the "Webinator." We tested many search engines and found it to be the most powerful one available for our purposes. It searches the New Religious Movements site, all the links from this site, and then all the links from those sites. It is not very useful if one is searching for a group that is not on our site, but it produces outstanding results in locating more resources for the groups we have profiled. One can also conveniently access all the major search engines from strategic locations throughout the site.

.Print Bibliographies. There is a print bibliography of every group profiled; reading bibliographies are being inserted for extended reading on lecture topics as well. The quality of these bibliographies varies considerably. Next to trying to track dead links, adding appropriate bibliography is an ongoing update task.

 Access to News Groups, List-serves and Newspapers. We seek to be current on providing links to all news groups and list-serves we know about. Reading news groups is not generally my favorite way of spending an evening, but they do represent another resource that can occasionally be informative, especially when something of significance is happening in a group. In addition, we have links to some of the major national and regional newspapers that can be accessed without cost. Regional newspapers can often be very helpful when a group becomes visible in the national news but is not sufficiently important to warrant significant coverage. In the Spring of 1998, for example, a group called Chen Tao, that had migrated to Garland, Texas from Taiwan captured brief national attention when the leader prophesized that God would appear on Channel 18 all across North America on March 25. The Dallas Morning News provided much more extensive coverage of this group than was available through the national media. The selected newspapers we have linked are intended more as a reminder of the value of regional newspapers than as a comprehensive guide.

Technology Tutorials. The large majority of students who take my class have little or no knowledge of web page construction at the beginning of the term. I devote one class to HTML instruction. Everything else a student needs to know to create a web page is available in the form of a series of memos and tutorial templates developed by Craig Hirsh. These templates can be cut and pasted into the student's own product. Another HTML instruction page, also developed by Hirsh for another course I teach, provides a different approach, as well as step by step instructions for FTPing (uploading) materials to their web site address. These resources have proved to be amazingly effective for self-guided instruction.

 The Religious Freedom Home Page. One of the learning goals I identify for my religious movements course is to "develop an appreciation of the central role of religious liberty for all human liberties." I touch on this subject at the beginning of the semester and then return to the theme from time to time during the course. As the religious movement web site developed, it became increasingly clear that this was not a subject I was addressing systematically.

 As I began to consider how I might better incorporate this goal into the course, I became aware of the fact that web-based information about religious freedom is a lot like information on religious movements. I found much rich material, but no single location where these materials were integrated or packaged. The challenge of pulling these materials together proved to be too enticing to ignore. So, turning again to students for assistance, we have taken some first steps toward the creation of a Religious Freedom Page. This page will not likely have as much on-site materials as the Religious Movements page, but it will integrate vast amounts of material that is both national and international in scope.

 For me, the most important considerations in creating this page are (1) my personal belief that religious freedom really is the cornerstone of all human liberty, and (2) that intolerance of religions, as well as intolerance by religions, constitutes a significant threat to the social fabric of human society. We need to better understand the roots of intolerance exhibited toward and by religious groups. One way to begin this task is to gain a clearer perspective on the scope and breadth of the problem. That is the mission of the Religious Freedom Home Page.

 Religious Broadcasting Home Page. Those who know my work are aware of my long time fascination with the religions of the airwaves. I view Fundamentalism and Pentecostalism as the two most successful religious movements of the 20th century. And, further, I see their aggressive utilization of the airwaves as an important factor in explaining their success not only in the U.S., but around the world. The Religious Broadcasting Home Page has been created, in part, to offer a forum for developing this perspective more fully. As with the religious movements and religious freedom pages, this page will seek to fill a void by organizing religious broadcasting resources so that they can be more easily accessed, both for general information and systematic comparison.

This completes the tour. I want to turn now to discuss how others might utilize these materials and how we might work together to create a product or products that enrich the resources available for students and instructors of religious movements.

 Making Use of These Materials

When I became a Teaching Technology Fellow at the University of Virginia in 1995, the creation of a web site that would have several million hits a year was the furthermost thing imaginable to me. I was struggling to create materials to present to my class. In the first section of this paper I recalled the process whereby that modest goal was transformed into course and resources that are now available on the World Wide Web.

 I was pleased when Madeleine Cousineau advised me that there was to be another edition of the ASA Syllabi and Instructional Materials for the Sociology of Religion teaching resources volume. My own approach to teaching introductory sociology of religion has been very much shaped by many good ideas I picked up from other scholars who shared their materials in the earlier editions of this volume. Readers who are familiar with the earlier editions will see the evidence of my borrowing in my Sociology of Religion course syllabus.

 It is now pay-back time. By contributing to this volume I have the opportunity to offer my materials to any and all who may find them useful.

The investment I have made in creating web-based instructional materials is itself testimony to the importance I attribute to the future of this medium. Early on I enlisted the help of my students because I realized that the task was much bigger than I could handle alone. The unanticipated pay off of this venture was the discovery of a new way to teach and a new way to learn. I learned that creating a web page strongly motivated a significant proportion of my students. And, further, motivated students would more readily invest their time and energy. For them, there are multiple pay-offs.

 For all of the students, there is a pay-off in learning the technology of web-page construction and becoming skilled at searching the Internet. I mention this first because it is the common experience and learning that transcends the substantive content of the course. Many students have come back in subsequent semesters and shared with me their excitement about how they were able to apply these skills for research in other courses.

 Most of the students do learn a great deal about the group they profile. And many of them understand the link between this learning task and the theoretical perspective presented in the lectures and readings. The best students recognize that their profile project is not just another term paper that they will file away and forget. They have viewed the access statistics and know people around the world may read their paper. This motivates them to reach toward excellence and fair numbers achieve this goal. The pride they exhibit in polishing their final products is really quite amazing.

 I hope that my experience will encourage many of you to offer your students the opportunity to both use and create materials. With just a little encouragement, students are capable of learning the technology. They can learn everything they need to know by following the step by step instructions on this page. And, of course, there are many helpful learning resources on the web. We have identified a few of them and created links to these resources from our site.

Creating a significant web site obviously constitutes a big investment of time, and this is not something that I suggest everybody should rush out and do. Creating a small web site for students to post their work, however, is not very difficult. Alternatively, and I'll mention this further below, I can create a structure where class projects from other universities can find a home.

There are other ways to use the site short of having students use this page as a model for creating their own materials. The resources on the site, and those easily accessible from it, provide lots of material for debate and discussion. Moreover, the thousands of links from this site point the way to vast resources that can be used by students to prepare more conventional reports or papers.

 Many of the materials on the Religious Movements site can be adapted to courses in introductory sociology of religion. Keith Roberts' Religion in Sociological Perspective is substantially informed by a religious movements perspective. Those who use this text will readily find materials on the Religious Movements page that can be assigned to students to enrich Roberts' presentations. Some of you may find my lectures can be used to supplement your own. Others might wish to assign some of my lectures to give students a different perspective on the topic.

 I invite you to use the materials in whatever way fits your own course. And I encourage you to share your experiences with me. As interesting suggestions may emerge, I'll add them as an addendum to the web version of this paper.

 Some Suggestions for Cooperative Ventures

 In the concluding section of this paper I want to offer some suggests of things we can do cooperatively to enrich the amount and quality of web based resources for sociology of religion instruction and learning.

1. Create more religious movements web sites. It is my personal hope that many more scholars of religion will undertake the task of creating web sites. There are at least three good reasons why I hope this will happen.

 * The Internet provides an enormous opportunity for scholars to share their research and conceptual thinking with other scholars. Sharing drafts of our papers and manuscripts with colleagues has been a cherished way of getting feedback for generations. The Internet can significantly expand the circle of communication.

* Just as one text book will not do for all instructors, multiple web sites will increase the options available to teachers of religion to find materials that are suited for their purposes and perspectives. Web sites on religious movements can and should have different foci. My own conceptual approach to religious movements is guided by the Stark and Bainbridge general theory of religion. There are other important ways to conceptualize the phenomenon of new religions and it is important that these perspectives be present in the marketplace of ideas.

* A very large proportion of all web sites devoted to religious movements have been created by anti-cultists and counter-cultists. Serious scholarship and objective information deserves better representation on the Internet. Our goal should not be to create more sites, but to create multiple opportunities for people to discover the meaning of objective, sober reflection about religious movements.

2. Create a web ring. Web rings are created with a fairly simple program that links together materials dealing with a common subject matter. A person who identifies a web ring can use it to move from one site to another. Access to participation in Web rings varies from "by invitation only" to allowing virtually whoever would like to attach themselves to the ring. Properly conceptualized and monitored, web rings have the potential of creating a very significant advance over searching or snowball surfing. By linking together scholarly sites on the same topic, the possibility of the casual drop-in discovering similar sites is enhanced. Hence scholarship is promoted.

3. Create a service site for the publication of student papers. In my discussion above, I urge teachers to encourage their students to create papers and pages that merit being placed on a web site. Any student who creates a web site can, of course, upload his own paper. Similarly, it is not difficult to create class pages in scores of colleges and universities that contain archives of quality student papers. Better yet, why not create a site where many institutions can place papers and projects? Such a site would take a little time to manage, but could be set up so that it would largely run itself. The quality control would be decentralized to the individual instructors. The site could easily be made searchable. If there is enough participation, why not create some awards?

 4. Create an on-line teaching forum. There are a couple of news groups that are substantially the domain of social scientists of religion. Irving Hexlem's new religions list <nurel-l@listserv.ucalgary.ca> is a good source for information about religious movements topics, but I can't recall that I have ever picked up any explicit tips about teaching from that list. From my years of participation in the SSSR/RRA and the Association for the Sociology of Religion, I know there are many scholars who are very dedicated to their teaching. We would all benefit if there were a forum for continual sharing of ideas. Why not create a monitored teaching forum for the exchange of ideas about teaching courses in the social scientific study of religion? This could be a joint project of the sponsors of this syllabi and instructional materials-- the American Sociological Association and the Association for the Sociology of Religion. Rather than occasional published updates of this volume, we could have continually updated materials.

 5. Help me make the New Religious Movements site a better instructional resource. As much as I have enjoyed creating this site, it is a constant struggle to keep up with all the things I know need to be done. Unlike a book, a web page is never finished. Web pages become perpetual motion machines driven by new ideas and things to fix. I have called on my students and now I'm calling on my professional colleagues to join in the process of creating a better site. I invite intellectual products and a monitoring of content. You'll find feedback instruments all over the site. You can use them, or address your comments to: hadden@virginia.edu. Here are some specific ideas that I would appreciate hearing from you about,but this is by no means an exhaustive list:

 Intellectual products:

 * Brief essays that address significant issues about religious movement topics. Anytime you poke around the site and say, "why doesn't he have anything about 'x,' you have most likely identified a topic for inclusion. These essays might deal with either conceptual or substantive matters. It would be of great value to me if you identify a spot where your contribution would fit, but that is not necessary.

 * Profiles on groups we have not yet covered, or new pages to replace some of the profiles that are pretty obviously not up to the highest standards.

 * Materials that can be attached to existing Profiles.

* Suggestions for new directions on the page. For example, I would like to create a segment that would include fairly short essays that could serve as background material for classroom debates on important topics: e.g., anti-cult movement, media coverage of religious movement stories, secularization theory, new religions and the courts, etc.

* I would also welcome student products you believe merit inclusion. This might include Profiles that are modeled after our format, term papers, or theses and dissertations. We currently have a dissertation, an MA thesis, and an undergraduate honor thesis for UVa students on the site. We expect to add more.

Monitoring of content:

In addition to intellectual content, I want the page to be free of factual mistakes and inoperative structure as possible. If you spot a problem, use e-mail to let me know about any of the following:

 * Incorrect information about a group

* Significant information that is missing

* Bibliographical items that should be included (don't hesitate your own work)

* Web sites we have failed to include

* Dead links or other technical glitches that need to be fixed

Conclusion

I hope the product I have created with my students will serve your professional and teaching interests. It is very much a work in process. It can be a better product with your help. I invite you to join this aging mariner in navigating cyberspace. And, I welcome your comments and criticisms about what we have created and what we might yet do that would be helpful for your purposes. If you do communicate, I'll create an addendum to the electronic version of this page that will summarize your thoughts and new ideas that emerge from our dialogue.

Also available in this site section:

• Welcome Message
• Our Mission Statement