Spirituality International

Presenter: Jos Huls

Jos Huls presented in short:

• the idea behind Web 2.0 and the use of open source software,
• the Titus Brandsma Institute,
• the international network for education (Spirin Education) and Spirituality International (Spirin) especially the Encyclopedia.

Web 2.0:


For the presentation of Web 2.0 see:
http://titusbrandsmainstituut2.blogspot.com/

The Titus Brandsma Institute

For the presentation of the Titus Brandsma Institute download: tbi.ppt

Spirituality Network for Education

For the presentation of the international network for accademic education in spirituality download: spine.ppt

See also

The website: Spirituality Network for Education

Spirin & Spirin Encyclopedia

The Spirin Encyclopedia is embedded in bigger project Spirin. In this we have five relatively independent projects.

• Spine or Spirin education
• Bibliography
• Who is who?
• Forum
• Bulletin Board
• Spirin Encyclopedia

Most of these projects are near to be published on the net.
As you can see, Spirin Encyclopedia forms the center of this project. It is the heart of the matter.
Our purpose is to create an international platform connecting researchers and teachers of spirituality living and working in different academic settings, countries and continents, offering opportunities to remain informed on new insights, to share a bibliographic database, to meet and discuss concerning these insights by means of a digital Encyclopedia in process and discussion forums.
We are developing a digital encyclopedia of Spirituality with the help of Wikimedia Software.

https://wiki.science.ru.nl/Titus-Brandsma-Instituut/spirin/Main_Page

The idea is not only to organize and collect information, but above all to create an international workplace of creative thinking.

This is a platform for scholars to present their research and to discus their insights with other colleagues.

We have studied a lot of printed Encyclopedia’s. We studied very old and new ones. We were interested in their architecture and purpose. We extracted from them ten dimensions.
As you could see in the introduction our approach is phenomenological. So we want to be as open as possible and welcome many different viewpoints, the more the better. So the ten dimensions of the encyclopedia are meant as orientation points to open a space and not to limit the space. For us the relation between the different dimensions is very important.

For example an article can describe processes from a historical points of view. The architecture gives the possibility to bring to the fore the different perspectives. It is also possible to study the same subject from different point of view. For example I have written a PhD on Beatrice of Nazareth but this is mainly a textual study (texts, words and proccesses). Someone else can write a study from a historical point of view.

We have a journal Studies in Spirituality, that functions as scientific platform. Now we want to extend it to the ICT media. We hope the encyclopedia will become a community of scholars and other interested people in the field of spirituality.

We have already a board covering the different dimensions. This is a collaboration of the Titus Brandsma Instituut and the University of Nijmegen. A team of scholars of the theological faculty of Nijmegen is willing to invest research time for this purpose. They form also the editorial. board.

Our initial idea is:

This Encyclopedia is a platform for researchers worldwide for ongoing research, discussion and collaboration. The final publication in the Encyclopedia is refereed. For this we have an academic board. The new articles will also be published in a digital journal. The purpose is to create an open space so that the content is available for as many persons as possible, working in the field of spirituality.

Questions:

How accessible this encyclopaedia has to be? It will be open for everyone to read, but we are doubting about the people, who contribute to it. Only scholars or everyone who is interested? Especially in the field of spirituality we have a lot of freaks.

1. If open, how may scholars be motivated to work and publish in this encyclopaedia?
2. Is it possible to mix up a popular and scientific encyclopaedia?
3. Is it possible to have different levels in the encyclopaedia?
4. How may articles in this Encyclopaedia be accepted as real scientific publications in order to receive credits?
5. What will be the function of the editorial board?
6. Especially for third world countries source materials are essential. What to do with copy protected source materials? For instance my research is on Dag Hammarskjöld but the text of my research is copy protected.
7. How will it be possible to organize a small institute in such a way that this service can be maintained?
8. What kind of organization is necessary to develop such a web-community?
9. What parts can be done in company and what parts should be done outside the institute?

Spirin Encyclopedia and the development of a research oriented master.

This Encyclopedia will also form the center of the learning process of (PhD and Master) students. For this reason the content of the modules Spirin education will be published in this encyclopedia. But the students will not only find their content there, but the Encyclopedia will also function as a research environment where they develop there own research questions and actual research individually as well as a group.

The department of information technology has done a pilot with the wikimedia software as a kind of digital learning environment. This pilot turns out to be very successful.

See: https://wiki.science.ru.nl/IIwerkplaats/BenB/

Questions

1. What are good and bad practices in the field of web-communities of scholars and students?
2. What kind of new forms of research oriented education are possible with the use of internet?
3. Universities are protecting their students. That’s their revenue. The Spirin network is globally oriented. This means that there is an incompatibility of interest. How do you think it is possible to create a worldwide network of specialist in the field of spirituality and collaboration in the assistance of students? For instance, how can students from the third world take part in it?
4. Especially for third world country source materials are essential. What to do with copy protected source materials? For instance my research is on Dag Hammarskjöld but the text of my research is copy protected.
5. How to use media like streaming video, video conferencing etc. in such a way that they are available in third world countries? What is realistic to develop at this moment?
6. There are a lot of initiatives of universities to make available their content. We want more a living community and a personalized route of the student in which the research question is leading. How this idea fits with initiatives like the Rice University or MIT university and others?
7. What kind of other open source software is available?
8. What is necessary in order that this software may function accurately? (We like the idea of central hosting service of Christian oriented organisations in favour of the use of open source software and the use of new technologies as streaming video.)
9. What kind of structure in the company is necessary to use this software?

Comments

• This project is usefull for those scholars, who are more interested in interdisciplinary issues. Scholars who are more bound to the methods of their own discipline, are less willing to discuss their research in broader scholarly discours. There are examples of discussion groups of scholars with references to articles, that are from a scholarly point of view more interesting than the journals in which the articles are published. In fact sometimes they become journals in itself.
• The encyclopedia can thought as a source of information, but more likely it will be used as a forum for scholarly discussions.
• Articles can be linked to the encyclopedia as pdf files.
• From the point of view of communication it is better to think about small interest groups.
• Science Commons is possibly the most helpful organization by scholarly publications
  (See: Science Commons)
• Begin small and see how it will grow.