Thomas Edison State University | Prior Learning Assessment Course Description
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PLA Portfolio Assessment Course Subjects

Religion

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Courses 1-10 of 22 matches.
World Religions   (REL-405)   3 credits  
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Course Description
World Religions: Exploring Diversity examines the complexity of religion as a multidimensional phenomenon characterized by heightened experience, ritual practice, powerful myths, ethical teaching, social organization, and theological doctrine. The course explores religious traditions that are alive today and that involve the lives of the majority of people worldwide from the indigenous religions of Africa and North America to the major world religions of the East such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, and Shinto, as well as the western religions of the Book: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The course is interdisciplinary in that it includes material from historical and social studies, literary and artistic expressions, and philosophical and theological insights into the world's religions. In a world increasingly aware of its cultural diversity and richness, exploring the religious life and consciousness of a people is one way of gaining access to that diversity.

Learning Outcomes
Through the Portfolio Assessment process, students will demonstrate that they can appropriately address the following outcomes:

  • Discuss and discriminate between the basic dimensions that constitute the phenomena of religion throughout the world, including the experiential, mythic, ritual, doctrinal, social and ethical dimensions.
  • Analyze the different forms and implications of religious experience.
  • Discuss and evaluate the power of myth in world religions.
  • Assess how the religious beliefs and practices of others relate to their own worldviews.
  • Compare the key doctrines of the world's major religions.
  • Compare and contrast the different forms of social organization of the various world religions.
  • Compare and contrast features of the ethical systems from the world's religions.
  • Analyze the relationship between doctrine and truth (that is, revealed theology and natural theology).
  • Evaluate current trends and developments in the intersection of religion and society.

Available by DSST exam. 
Philosophy of Religion   (PHI-370)   3 credits  
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Course Description
Philosophy of Religion (PHI-370) explores the philosophical issues involved with religion as a universal human phenomenon. Topics include definitions of religion, proofs for the existence of God, the nature and variety of religious experience, the immortality of the soul, the problem of evil, the relation between religion and ethics, and the relation between science and religion. The course examines the philosophy of religion from a multicultural perspective. It includes readings from the most influential religious traditions.

Learning Outcomes
Through the Portfolio Assessment process, students will demonstrate that they can appropriately address the following outcomes:

  • Define religion.
  • Describe the different dimensions of religion.
  • Distinguish among the different meanings of the sacred from impersonal to anthropomorphic.
  • Assess the significance of gender issues applied to God and/or the gods and language regarding them, especially in prayer and liturgical expression.
  • Critically assess the different arguments for the existence of God.
  • Explain the place of religious experience in the overall context of religious life.
  • Analyze the problem of theodicy, also known as the problem of evil.
  • Examine the role of religion in grounding ethics.
  • Analyze the meaning and possibility of an afterlife.
  • Explain the conflict between science and religion.
  • Evaluate points of commonality for inter-religious dialogue and cooperation.

 
Eastern Religions   (REL-406)   3 credits  
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Course Description
Eastern Religions is an introductory course, offering a foundation in religious literacy. The religious traditions encountered in this course are those that are alive today and involve the lives of a significant number of people worldwide--Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, and Shinto. The course is interdisciplinary in that it includes historical and social materials, literary and artistic expressions, and philosophical and theological insights of world religions. In a world that has become increasingly aware of its cultural diversity and richness, it is clear that one way to gain access to that diversity and richness is by exploring the religious consciousness and practice of a people.

Learning Outcomes
Through the Portfolio Assessment process, students will demonstrate that they can appropriately address the following outcomes:

  • Discuss the roles and functions of religion in human history and contemporary life, especially Eastern religions.
  • Name, define, and discuss some of the important features and concepts used in religious studies, and give examples of each of these features from the religious traditions under study.
  • Recognize the differences among the religious traditions under study.
  • Explain the patterns for comparison and contrast of the religions under study.
  • Appreciate the religious-based issues and conflicts in the modern world and contribute to their mediation in whatever ways touch your life.
  • Develop insights into the religions under study that can enrich life.
  • Analyze the value and benefits of studying the religions featured in this course.

 
Western Religions   (REL-407)   3 credits  
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Course Description
Western Religions is an introductory course, offering a foundation in religious literacy. The religious traditions encountered in this course are those that are alive today and involve the lives of a significant number of people worldwide--Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and new emerging religions. The course is interdisciplinary in that it includes historical and social materials, literary and artistic expressions, and philosophical and theological insights of world religions. In a world that has become increasingly aware of its cultural diversity and richness, it is clear that one way to gain access to that diversity and richness is by exploring the religious consciousness and practice of a people.

Learning Outcomes
Through the Portfolio Assessment process, students will demonstrate that they can appropriately address the following outcomes:

  • Discuss the roles and functions of religion in human history and contemporary life, especially Western religions.
  • Name, define, and discuss some of the important features and concepts used in religious studies, and give examples of each of these features from the religious traditions under study.
  • Recognize the differences among the religious traditions under study.
  • Explain the patterns for comparison and contrast of the religions under study.
  • Appreciate the religious-based issues and conflicts in the modern world and contribute to their mediation in whatever ways touch your life.
  • Develop insights into the religions under study that can enrich life.
  • Analyze the value and benefits of studying the religions featured in this course.

 
Social Organization   (ANT-332)   3 credits  
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Course Description
Principles of social organization studied cross-culturally: locality, age, sex, kinship and marriage, comradeship. Institutional bases: household organization, kinship, religion, law, production, and distribution.

Learning Outcomes
Through the Portfolio Assessment process, students will demonstrate that they can appropriately address the following outcomes:

  • Identify principles applied in social organization in various cultures
  • Discuss bases behind social organization, notably age, sex, marriage and comradeship
  • Identify institutional determinants of group organization with reference to household, kinship, religion, and law
  • Present economic considerations at work in production and distribution of goods and services
  • Suggest practical applications of findings and means of information sharing

 
Food and Culture   (ANT-430)   3 credits  
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Course Description
Culinary customs studied cross-culturally. Food in relation to sex, kinship, politics, economics, religion. Visual, olfactory, textural, and gastronomic food preferences. Values and nutrition. World nutritional systems.

Learning Outcomes
Through the Portfolio Assessment process, students will demonstrate that they can appropriately address the following outcomes:

  • Discuss how culture and food define each other; its social identity and symbolic expression
  • Describe food acquisition, choices, preparation, consumption, etiquette, and social stratification
  • Demonstrate how food influences aspects of sex, love, marriage, family and kinship
  • Analyze the role of food in economics, politics, power, freedom, religion, purity and taboo
  • Identify peculiarities relative to visual, olfactory, textural, and gastronomic preferences
  • Compare and contrast food values, nutrition standards, healthy body and esthetics
  • Suggest practical applications of findings and means of information sharing

 
Introduction to the Humanities I: Physical Thought   (HUM-101)   3 credits  
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Course Description
Introduction to the Humanities: Philosophical Thought examines the question: How do we live a meaningful life? Drawing from a range of Western philosophers, the course examines the basic tension between the Greco-Roman tradition of secular humanism and the traditions of theistic religion (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). Students will absorb and digest philosophical ideas from Plato, sacred texts (the Bible and the Koran), Marx, Nietzsche, Sartre, Frankl, and Weil, among others. Course content consists of a series of half-hour video lectures along with text readings. Throughout, the course challenges students to consider and reconsider what constitutes a meaningful life. This course is based on the course "Philosophy, Religion, and the Meaning of Life" from the Teaching Company.

Learning Outcomes
Through the Portfolio Assessment process, students will demonstrate that they can appropriately address the following outcomes:

  • Discuss the roles that philosophy and religion play in the search for a meaningful life.
  • Describe the contrasting metaphors of hero and saint.
  • Discuss philosophical development from the Greek heroic ideal through Plato's citizen-hero and the philosopher-ruler of Stoic thought.
  • Differentiate the saint from the hero through further study of the "religions of the book": Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
  • Discuss the development of philosophical concepts of individualism, humanism, skepticism, and secularism from the Middle Ages through the Enlightenment.
  • Examine the effects of cultural and historical traumas of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries on the search for meaning .
  • Discuss philosophical concepts of freedom, responsibility, and suffering introduced by existentialism and the Holocaust.
  • Examine the philosophy of Simone Weil and her quest for wholeness and social justice.
  • Apply philosophical ideas about a meaningful life to contemporary problems.

 
Christianity and the Human Experience   (REL-223)   3 credits  
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Course Description
Study of the concept and role of religion and faith in relation to personal development. Included are analysis of religious experience, the need for formal expressions of faith, the value of faith development, and the meaning of prayer in faith-life.

Learning Outcomes
Through the Portfolio Assessment process, students will demonstrate that they can appropriately address the following outcomes:

  • Identify the aesthetic, ethical, moral, social, and cultural dimensions of human experience needed for participation in the Christian community
  • Survey the nature, purpose and role of Scriptures and sacred writings as source of authority and inspiration for faith and practice in the context of Christian theology
  • Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the different ways of interpreting the Scriptures literally or figuratively citing examples of the world in which we live, and of how both past and present have an impact on the future of Christianity
  • Analyze the meaning of religion as part of life and the place of prayer in faith-life.

 
The Jewish Woman   (REL-387)   3 credits  
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Course Description
The role of the Jewish woman in religion, history, community life, and culture. Influence of surrounding cultures and problems of today.

Learning Outcomes
Through the Portfolio Assessment process, students will demonstrate that they can appropriately address the following outcomes:

  • Examine the lives of Jewish women during the biblical period and their journey towards rabbinic ordination.
  • Identify the Jewish law regarding sexuality and marital relations.
  • Analyze the experience of women in the context of Jewish history, culture and law.
  • Explore how modern culture affected Jewish women's community, social and political activism.

 
An Introduction to Islam   (REL-275)   3 credits  
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Course Description
An Introduction to Islam is a comprehensive interdisciplinary introduction to Islam. Here we use the word Islam in its broadest sense, at once designating a religion, a civilization, a world culture, a human community, and a political entity. While the emphasis of this course is on the formative and classical phase of Islamic history, the course will move on a very wide canvas, covering the entire period from the rise of Islam in the seventh century down to the present day. The tools of analysis employed will be drawn from a multiplicity of disciplines: particularly from history, sociology, religious studies, and philosophy.

Learning Outcomes
Through the Portfolio Assessment process, students will demonstrate that they can appropriately address the following outcomes:

  • Demonstrate a broad knowledge of the history of Islam.
  • Describe the basic doctrines of Islamic religion, distinguishing its internal diversities and summarizing its overall unifying elements.
  • Identify key characteristics of the Koran, the Prophet, and Islamic law.
  • Explain major elements of Islamic religious practice, rituals, sects, mysticism and popular traditions.
  • Describe the ethnic, geographical and linguistic spread of Muslims around the globe.
  • Discuss Islam as a grand world civilization, describing its contributions in the fields of art, architecture, and literature, as well as its role in the Scientific Revolution that culminated in Isaac Newton.
  • Synthesize the understanding of Islam in order to process, make sense of, and explain the realities of the twenty-first century world of Islam.

 
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