Adult Ed Growing, At A Distance
Source: The NY Jewish Week
Julie Wiener takes a look at Atid's Jerusalem based WebYeshiva, the first fully interactive online Yeshiva and Midrasha for Jewish learning, Jewish study, and Torah learning in which 800 mostly Orthodox adults from around the world are enrolled.
Founded in November 2007, WebYeshiva, is a pioneer in tech-enabled adult Jewish education, offering more than 20 co-ed courses per semester — most meet once or twice weekly for a semester, but some are one- or three-session-only. While never expensive, it recently began offering all its courses free of charge, although students are encouraged to make donations.
WebYeshiva, using software called WebEx, is one of the few venues for live, or “synchronous,” classes, in which students can interact with the instructor and one another through instant messaging or by talking into their computer’s microphone. While most of its courses are conducted in English, WebYeshiva also offers classes in Russian and Spanish too. It also archives audio and video recordings of all classes, enabling students to review classes or make up missed classes.
WebYeshiva also soon hopes to expand into youth education when it will obtain funding to pilot an online Hebrew school.
Read the entire article at The Jewish Week.