Section One

All things being equal. . .

All things being equal, today’s students are not so different than yesterday’s students: are they? Don’t students of today go to class, listen to lectures, take notes, read reference books, spend time in the library, hang out and socialize together? In a word – No!

Few students complete a traditional program of education from beginning to end. Today’s students are not tethered to their educational environment by the traditional constraints of time and space. Today it is possible for a hundred students to sign up for the same course, never meet one another, never occupy the same classroom or hear the same lecture simultaneously--never mind hanging out together, going to the library or sharing a dormitory. Today’s students are eclectic in their selection of both curriculum and provider. Technology has changed all of this and the same technology is changing the nature of the educational process, the tools, the methods, and the ultimate product--the graduate. The changes are abundantly plain to see in our Bible colleges and seminaries. One obvious example is “distance education.”

Today, distance education represents one of the fastest growing trends in Christian education. It is a dramatic illustration of fundamental change in education. Distance education is, in its extreme formulation, a “cradle to grave” phenomenon. Parents are purchasing a bewildering array of pre-school educational material complete with teaching instructions. Home schools are sweeping across the landscape with every imaginable digital device from computers, CDs, MP3 downloads, video DVDs, and live satellite broadcasts. And it doesn’t stop with primary education. After high school “distance education” offers college, degree and non-degree courses and continuing education for life. With a heavy reliance on digital delivery systems, it is possible today to earn a Ph.D. without ever visiting a traditional institution of higher learning.

Using biblical studies as an example, distance education programs in biblical studies rely far more heavily than do traditional schools on digital delivery systems, for everything from courses to text books to library services to online discussion and examinations. In fact, virtually all distance education programs in biblical studies incorporate and require digital services as part of their standard programs, whereas less than five percent of residential campus programs require computers for biblical studies. In this respect, the distance education providers have the easier task of incorporating digital tools into the learning process. The process is significantly more challenging in the traditional classroom.

Today’s seminary classroom is reminiscent of the engineering classroom thirty years ago where students sat in a common classroom, listened to a common lecture and experienced two distinctly different educational experiences. . . because half the students had digital calculators and half had old-fashioned slide rules. A technology gap had disrupted the traditional educational process. Within a few years the technology gap widened even further as some students invested in computers with powerful engineering software while others remained dependent on calculators. The slide rules had been retired.

Take a look at this recent excerpt from Harris Interactive. . .

ROCHESTER, N.Y., Aug. 18, 2004 /PRNewswire/ -- Notice a lilt in the gait of college students as they begin the familiar migration back to campus this month? It could be the weighty $122 billion in spending power they're carrying in their wallets, including $24 billion in discretionary spending.

In addition to the basics -- the majority of college students (90%) own a computer, and two-thirds (65%) of those students have broadband connection; among students, 62% own a stereo, a cell phone (77%), a printer (77%), a television (84%) and a calculator (86%) -- they rely on an abundance of gadgets to access information, communicate with friends, and keep themselves entertained. Three-quarters of students (74%) own a DVD player and just over half (55%) own a gaming system. More than six in ten 18 to 24 year old college students use their cell phone for text messaging (62%) and playing games (70%), and 41% of students with cell phones can access the Internet through their mobile phone.

It’s not just college students that are being affected. College students are moving on to seminaries and bringing their digital appetites with them.

Over the past ten years the digital revolution has dramatically and permanently changed the academic landscape for biblical studies. Today, seminary professors face the technology gap head-on as they lecture to students equipped with an increasingly disparate array of digital resources. At the experiential level, seminary education is in danger of dividing the student body into two congregations like the early church service and the late church service.

One set of students carry legal pads and pens, spend hours each day working in the library using online catalogs or old card catalogs; scouring through individual book indexes and tables of content. Other students using computers search hundreds, and potentially thousands, of cross-referenced library resources on the hard disk--instantly accessible anywhere. These students are completing assignments while the first group is still working through the library catalogs in search of resources. These students might as well be engineers with ancient slide rules.  Here is my forecast: slide rules will not make a comeback. Computers are here to stay. The process of research, itself, arguably, has undergone the first significant change in a millennium.

Schools are caught in the middle. Faculties, themselves, have chosen sides in what has metamorphosed into a political contest. It is like a two party system with pro-digital and anti-digital factions. Accustomed to the neutral comfort zone of academic equanimity, technology has rudely imposed itself on administrators and faculty like neighborhood redistricting. The new digital technology has created or exposed widely divergent technical proficiency among students, faculty and administrators, destabilizing peer equilibrium, cutting across traditional hierarchies, establishing the new, and unwelcome, labels of “technology innovator” and “technology naysayer.” These changes, in the academic environment, however, are unique to the traditional campus. While traditional institutions struggle with adoption of the new technology, the very same digital technology is being rapidly deployed by distance education providers eager to enhance the remote learning experience and unify content delivery of library resources.

On the surface this might appear to be a non-issue. One person looks at a computer screen while another looks at a paper book. Upon closer examination, however, it is clear that digital tools provide much more than an “electronic paper” alternative to a book: digital books unlike their print counterpart provide functionality unavailable on the printed page. The digital product automatically links directly to additional information both within and without the book. The digital product, like the engineering workstation, performs thousands of tasks instantly, allowing the user to evaluate and examine vast quantities of information quickly and easily. The difference between a student working with a digital library system and the same student working with paper books is enormous. It is like the difference between a slide rule and an engineering workstation, a school bus and a Boeing 747, a shovel and an excavator. And the technology gap is widening every day.

Digital vs. paper reference works may no longer remain a simple matter of personal preference: many next generation reference works will be “digital only,” having no paper equivalent. Why would this happen? Won’t people who prefer paper always purchase their books in paper? Isn’t that the way it is even now? The same titles appear both in digital and paper formats? Yes, the present crop of digital titles is derived from the paper editions. In fact they are so like the paper editions that their chief difference is the digital media itself, and of course there is the functional difference.

Digital books do function differently than their paper counterpart in that they may be randomly searched for words, phrases and indexed lists such as maps, drawings and features unique to an individual title. This represents a change not in “form” but rather in “function.” It is of course the added functionality of rapid searching and retrieval which represents that distinguishing characteristic of digital books for which people are willing to invest money. It is the functionality, not the form, which sells digital books. And consider this: the functionality is a mere add-on to the existing book. The added functionality does not represent a new work or a redesign of an existing work; it is just automation of a manual task. It is more like replacing bicycle pedals with a motor.

To carry on the analogy, replacing bicycle pedals with a motor does not make a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. That would be something else. In like manner, the next generation of digital reference works will not be automated versions of paper print editions, but will represent new works created specifically for the digital medium. The functionality will be governed by the quality of computer science, rather than the constraints of the printed page. The difference will be an extreme difference in “kind,” like the difference between reading a musical score and listening to a live digital “surround sound” recording at the same time. The present generation of digital reference works contains the identical information as the paper editions; they are licensed from the print publishers. The next generation of digital reference works will offer the user multiple ways to view information to aid the learning process. Things that were nearly equal are beginning to look pretty unequal. Can you imagine? For the first time in 1,700 years, books do not look like books!

You and I are caught in the middle of this transition: one foot in the past and one foot tentatively stepping into the future. This is the uncertain time when loyalties to old ways break up and collapse while new ways sweep away time-honored traditions. And you are there. It is like getting caught in that “once in a millennium” storm, a rare, and dreaded, “fundamental paradigm shift” after which nothing ever returns to the way it once was. It is a time of dislocation, frustration and anxiety. It is, moreover, a time of opportunity and revitalization!

The library is going to the people instead of the people going to the library!

The digital revolution has permeated the total fabric of our society as nothing else in living memory--and like the printing press before it, the digital revolution has had no small part in providing new resources and opportunities for the church. It is important to understand this point: The church is a huge beneficiary of the digital revolution. A large percentage of all future Bible reference work will be authored, edited, packaged, distributed, sold and read without ever making an appearance on the printed page. Pastors, missionaries and students will have access to Bibles and Bible reference materials at any point on the globe. The library is going to the people instead of the people going to the library!

In the spirit of Gutenberg

It is particularly fitting that biblical studies take advantage of technology. Consider this historical precedent. "Religious truth is imprisoned in a small number of manuscript books which confine, instead of spread, the public treasure. Let us break the seal which seals up holy things and give wings to Truth in order that she may win every soul that comes into the world by her word no longer written at great expense by hands easily palsied, but multiplied like the wind by an untiring machine." --Johannes Gutenberg, ca. 1455.

Digital libraries for Biblical studies

The family of computer software resources generally referred to as “Bible Software” has experienced a metamorphosis similar to the transition from hand held calculators to the engineering workstations. There remains, however, one key breakdown in the analogy. Where the engineering workstation has been totally integrated into the learning process of engineering, the equivalent Biblical studies “workstation” has not yet been fully integrated into the Bible college, seminary, and distance education curriculum. This does not mean that there are no students or faculty using these powerful resources. It means that few institutions have completed the transition and committed themselves to full integration of the technology. Why is this?

The “Technology is not for everybody” Syndrome

In some seminaries and Christian colleges today, technology is the exclusive domain of the ‘Biblical languages’ department. It is assumed that students of Biblical languages are the most likely to use technology and other departments are less likely to benefit from digital products. While this may have been quite true ten years ago, it is no longer the case. The same information now available in books, video, and tapes is likely available in digital form, and at a lower price. Today the majority of digital Bible reference material is outside the discipline of original language studies.

Technology costs too much

This is a straw man. It just argues against the facts even in a cursory survey. If the cost of digital products was the key constraint in the market today, nobody would ever purchase music, video, television, portable audio devices, DVD players, video games, software etc. The reality is the digital libraries and digital music uniformly cost less than their traditional counterparts while offering significant improvements in utility. The digital library is becoming the “work station,” the electronic study carrel for online and offline research. Digital libraries also offer portability that extends the library resources to the home, the office and the mission field

According to USA Today, wholesale college textbook prices have gone up 35.1% since 1998. Additionally, the paper reported on February 12, 2004: The Washington-based State PIRGs Higher Education Project, in a report released last week, estimates that some public university students will spend nearly $900 this year on textbooks, which represents almost 20% of the national average tuition and fees for in-state students at public four-year universities. According to California assembly-member Carol Liu, a new textbook costs $102.44 on average for University of California students. Now what can I say? Are digital books expensive? No! Digital books are the greatest value in education.

We interrupt this class due to technical difficulties

One of the issues often cited as a reason for integrating technology in the classroom is the requirement of hardware and software technical support in the classroom. A very real fear is that the classroom will degenerate into a technical support burden for an instructor ill-equipped to cope with technical issues. This is a legitimate, but surmountable obstacle for which there needs to be a classroom strategy and procedure which minimizes technical down-time. There are a number of strategies that may be employed to minimize technical problems. They will be discussed in another section.

Deciding on an integration model

One other reason often cited for a failure to integrate technology is the frustration and indecision surrounding the implementation model. The following are just a few of the commonly discussed issues:

• Is a computer and software required or optional?
• Are notebook computers required so the student can bring the computer to class?
• Does the class need to be taught in a computer lab?
• Does the instructor use the computer for demonstration of course subject material alone or does the course expand to include the process of using the computer in a particular discipline?
• Does the instructor need a technical assistant during the class?
• Do assignments require the use of computers?

Interestingly enough, these questions are more easily resolved in the distance education arena than in the traditional classroom. The distance education programs are more easily adapted to the technology because they are more likely using digital components already.

Information Retention – the other role for digital libraries

As a technology company we work with more graduates than active students. The former outnumber the latter. Here is an anecdote we hear repeated over and over from the seminary grad and Bible school grads: “I never did well in Greek or Hebrew and I forgot nearly everything I ever learned within a couple of years of leaving school. Now, thanks to my digital library and Bible software, I am able to refresh and retain what I learned and I am now able use original languages every day.”

In much the same way that precision power tools give confidence and accuracy to amateur woodworkers, Bible software with its ability to flawlessly parse verbs, decline nouns and identify parts of speech provides Bible students the confidence to persevere in original language studies. (For a case study on retention and continued use of Hebrew by graduates, see Rethinking Hebrew Instruction.)

Confidence builders for a lifetime of ministry

Facts, figures, people, places and events are all at your fingertips within the Libronix Digital Library System. In the comfort of your own study, you can instantly compare, contrast, and evaluate the thoughts and words of commentators over the past two millennia. Digital libraries are empowerment. Now for the first time you can leave school and take the library with you.

The digital library: How many books is enough?

At Logos we are committed to the concept that there is no end of books. We are continually growing our capacity to produce electronic titles and extend digital libraries. This was not always the case. Once we thought in terms of putting a single Bible on a computer. Then we thought of adding a commentary, a dictionary and a topical Bible. Later we set our sights on an entire shelf of reference books and later, a complete pastor’s library. Today we think in terms of brick and mortar replacement.  This long term commitment is one of the reasons why the Libronix Digital Library System is the industry standard for Bible reference publishing and this is just the beginning.

We are now planning systems that will provide major library services to supplement or totally replace physical libraries, making it much easier to establish branch campuses and distance education programs. In short we are bringing the library to the student instead of the student to the library. Our target is digital libraries in the range of 40,000 plus titles. In actuality, there is no practical limitation at that point.

Digital library now or digital library later?

There is a chapter in a popular book on exegetical preaching which suggests a list of the essential seven hundred plus books that should serve as the foundation of your library. Seven hundred books! Foundation!? Is this possible? Of course it is, given time and money you can build this seven hundred book starter library. What would a seven hundred volume library cost? What does the average book cost? Any way you look at it, it is many thousands of dollars. I guess this should not be surprising. A good mechanic may spend $20,000 or more on a set of tools. Bible study and its related fields use expensive tools for study and the tools are called books.

All things being equal. . .

The student equipped with Logos Bible Software featuring the Libronix Digital Library System:

• Invests less money for more books
• enjoys a life time of portability
• works smarter, faster, and more accurately
• maintains original language skill indefinitely and
• makes better use of that precious commodity, time.

Section Two

Why purchase Logos Bible Software now?

Only full-time students, faculty and school staff receive special academic pricing on Libronix technology! Take advantage of this once in a life time opportunity to get started with your own digital library from Logos Bible Software. During your student years, you have the greatest need for books yet have the lowest disposable income. Because we recognize this fact and because we want you to learn to use the Libronix Digital Library System while you are in school, we offer you special pricing that is not available to anybody else.

We throw in the morphology software!

A digital library, because it contains a great many books, is a big investment for a student. And as much as you might wish to invest in a large digital library, you may feel a more pressing need to invest in specialized software to help you through the demanding course of learning Greek or Hebrew. If this is the case, we have great news for you! At no additional charge, Logos includes a full set of state-of-the-art language tools that allow you to perform complex morphological queries and analyses just like those found in dedicated Greek and Hebrew software packages.

With Logos you get both the digital library and the language software for the cost of the digital library alone. At the request of our users, we have added a comprehensive set of language tools so that our users would not have to own two different software packages. (NOTE: Many educators are unaware that Logos has added these tools and may still think of Logos as digital library software alone.)

Don’t get the impression that this is an insignificant set of language tools. It is robust--equal to, or better than--any other product in the market. Better still, Logos having made the commitment to develop language tools is setting the pace in new computer science in this field just as they have in digital libraries for more than a decade.

Not only does Logos now offer arguably the world's most powerful digital Greek and Hebrew tools, but an entire library of unabridged, standard, reference works including multiple Greek and Hebrew texts, morphological and syntactical databases, the broadest range of popular lexicon options and seamless compatibility with additional Libronix resources from publishers such as the German Bible Society (who publishes the critical apparatus for both the BHS Hebrew and the Nestle-Aland Greek texts in the Libronix Digital Library System). This is like a seminary education in a box.

Like a universal power supply that allows you to run anywhere

One of the reasons Logos is inherently different than other software is that it is totally UNICODE based. What does this mean? It means that the Libronix Digital Library System was developed from the ground up as a “world” product. It was designed not only to display and search any language in the world, it was designed to function with menus and help systems in any language.

You might be temped to say, “That doesn’t sound like a big deal.”  But it is! This is the difference between a “language” meaning a “font change” like on a printed page, and “language” meaning, font change, rules of punctuation, hyphenation, word breaks, stems, alphabetizing etc. Unicode makes it possible for the Libronix Digital Library System to mix the languages of the world on the same screen. It means the user may accurately limit a search to an individual language. For example you would not want to confuse the English word die, with the German word die. This accomplishment represents thousands of programming hours that is virtually invisible to the user but necessary to a universal digital library system capable of reproducing scholarly texts in any language.

The Libronix Digital Library System built into Logos Bible Software is more than a collection of books or a search engine. It is a comprehensive, state-of-the-art display and retrieval system for books, audio, video and graphics! It is the digital publishing standard for Bible reference publishing, with titles from more than 100 different publishers. It is the perfect extension to your existing print library. The Libronix Digital Library System follows standard library conventions on cataloging and bibliographic citation. It may be reliably cited for academic research. In short, no other digital library product has achieved broader acceptance in the academic community.

Section Three

Why invest in a digital Bible reference library?

Time, space and place

Time – The digital library will saves countless hours of page turning and book selection. One of the least rewarding tasks in education is the tedium of locating books that may be in or out of circulation, scanning indexes and tables of content and inserting bookmarks into applicable locations. In the digital library the computer locates the appropriate titles and opens each book to the appropriate article. You spend your time in study instead of paper handling.

Space – The digital library will fit entirely on the hard disk in your desktop or notebook computer. It does not require a special room, shelving or the assistance of a librarian. The books are never checked out, in use or improperly shelved. There is never a wait for access to the catalog. There is no reserve requirement, no checkout limit, no walk home in the rain.

Place – The digital library can go with you everywhere you go. Instead of going to the library, the library goes with you, on a plane, train or automobile. The digital library is the best library at the beach, in the mountains, desert or in the jungle. You can study or prepare lessons any place on earth.

Section Four

What about the Internet?

We are often asked this question. Doesn’t the Internet access all the information I need? Why buy dedicated Bible software when there is so much free data at my finger tips? I recently read an article from the Salon Media Group on “metadata” which served as the genesis of this next section.

Reasons why you can’t rely on the Internet

1. The Internet is adversarial. It is not your friend – You search for an article on nearly any subject you can name and chances are one or more of your first ten search hits is a porn site or a site intentionally unrelated to your subject attempting to sell you something. There are literally thousands of web information providers who want to get your attention with information unrelated to your search request which they will attempt to hijack.
2. The Internet is full of sloppy, undocumented, misspelled and mislabeled data – Information is presented with or without author’s names, titles, publishers, copyright data or standard bibliographic citation. Sometimes it is just a simple issue of ignorance, or human error. I just completed a Google search for “plam pilot” instead of “palm pilot.” I got 2,420 hits for articles in which the product name was misspelled as opposed to more than a million hits for the correct spelling. There is no editorial imperative to correct wrong or mislabeled information. Even the right information can be lost under the wrong label.
3. Internet data is not “cataloged” -- One of the most useful features in any digital library is the common catalog of resources. Libronix resources are cataloged according to standard AACR2 conventions (Anglo-American Cataloging Rules Second Congress) used by most reference libraries in the world. Let’s face it. Library science has been around longer than computer science. At Logos we made the decision a long time ago to be an extension of the traditional library, not a competing or alternative method of organizing research data. The digital library should represent a change in media, not a change in organization and common sense.
4. The Internet ranks search results with competing motives – There is no common standard for determining what is relative and important on the internet. Competing information providers advance their own agendas and position their data to compete for the highest ranking in search hits regardless of relevance to the intention of the user performing the search. The first 50 search hits on any internet search are more likely to demonstrate the results of manipulation by the data providers rather than a representation of relevance to the search request.
5. The Internet neither endorses, nor requires a formal vocabulary – On the other hand every discipline from medicine, to law, theology or physics requires a formal vocabulary which allows students to discuss their specialty with precision. The Internet sometimes accommodates this formality and sometimes does not. As one commentator stated, “the ephemeral and the profound get equal billing on the internet.” The Internet lacks the discipline of the editorial process to insure consistency. The Libronix Digital Library System represents unabridged editions of standard print editions that have passed through the editorial process and have proven their worthiness in publication.

Section Five

Supporting technology in the classroom

Differing views of technology integration

When we poll our own academic customer base, we find a wide variation in extent and quality of technology integration. Here are a few examples:

• Stealthy Students flying beneath the radar
  In some schools we have scores of students using our software on their own, totally disassociated from the official endorsement of the program and texts. These users are essentially independent purchasers of software using the product for their own benefit to reduce time and energy in completing classroom assignments. The faculty may or not even be aware of the presence of the “software fleet.” The fact is that these students are looking for an “edge” or “advantage” over their fellow classmates and are quite happy to keep the software knowledge to themselves. In this situation the professor becomes their unwitting partner by weighting all class assignments toward the student who does not have software.
• Faculty classroom demonstration model
  In this model, faculty will use software in the classroom to illustrate principles within the area of study. For example, the software might be used to illustrate methods of diagramming Greek or Hebrew or to demonstrate and illustrate the tense or mood in a passage. This is basically the traditional lecture model with visual aids provided by the computer software. It requires a computer and a video projector.
• Faculty presentation and student interaction with the software
  This model assumes that the students also have computers in the classroom. This might be a classroom where each student carries a notebook computer or it might represent a class taught in the computer lab. There are a number of variations on this classroom style as well.
  • Teaching Assistants
    When everybody in the classroom has a computer, there is always the danger of the class degenerating into a “show and tell” or worse yet, a group tech support session. To avoid this and promote a proper environment for the professor to stay on message, some schools have appointed a student technical assistant, whose job it is to move around the classroom and deal with technical issues and remove that burden from the professor. There is always some student who knows more about the software and hardware than the instructor. Use it to your advantage.
  • Merge subject and software training
    Much to our surprise, there is a growing trend to teach the subject through the vehicle of the software with the result that the student simultaneously learns the subject, say Greek, and how to use the software tool. This is a real hands-on vocational approach which results in the student developing both an academic understanding as well as a practitioner's understanding at the same time.

The challenge of selecting the right resources

While the benefits of owning a portable digital library are obvious, so too are the constraints of budget. While the book budget will go further with a digital library, few people enjoy a limitless budget and therefore some sort of informed strategy must be employed in selecting digital titles.

• General Collections are your best investment
  Search for the pre-defined collection of books that comes closest to meeting your objectives. Since collections have, by far, the lowest cost per title, you can afford to discard a number of books for which you have no interest and still save money. If you are using your library for church ministry, remember to get a collection that also reflects the kinds of books used by those to whom you are ministering.
• Affinity Collections also offer significant savings
  Affinity collections are collections of specialty books that relate to the same subject such as NT Greek. These specialized collections often contain individual titles which are appreciably more expensive than titles found in general collections. Affinity collections are one way to reduce the cost of accumulating these more costly titles.
• NewsWire Specials
  Subscribing to the Logos NewsWire is yet another way to reduce the cost of books. Every week or two, Logos offers special reduced-cost specials on selected titles. If you are patient and can wait for titles to come on sale, you can save a lot of money.
• Pre-Publication Offers
  Nearly every week, Logos offers new electronic titles at discounted pre-publication prices. The earlier you subscribe, the lower your cost to purchase.

Section Six

The new baseline

The concept of a technology baseline

Many colleges and universities require students to demonstrate proficiency in basic computer skills including word processing, email, and web browsing. Many schools now offer remedial courses for those without these baseline skills. In many cases, it is the older adult students enrolled in the remedial courses. As one educator stated, “If you are more comfortable holding a pen than a mouse, you need to learn basic computer skills.” As computers become even more dominate in the educational environment, the baseline will continue to rise.

At Logos, we are hard at work to meet the challenge of raising baseline proficiency for the entire student population through an innovative use of automation. Here is our thinking:

Today’s software systems are mature, powerful and complex. Software like our own Logos Bible Software is in its third generation. That means that the entire product has been written from the ground up, three times, with countless intermediate, incremental revisions. Those who have used the software for the past 13 years have grown with the software. Those who purchase today may be overwhelmed by the product. Our challenge is to quickly bring all users up to a minimum baseline of proficiency. This we are doing through the use of automation.

Although a Boeing 747 is an enormously complex aircraft and requires hundreds of hours of training and experience for the prospective pilot, that same aircraft can fly itself with the push of a single “autopilot” button. In like manner, we have incorporated an autopilot feature in Logos Bible Software which “flies” the software for the inexperienced operator as well as the experienced operator who just wants a quick solution. The effect of this autopilot function which we call “Passage Guide,” is to effectively raise the baseline in Bible software proficiency and insure that every student using the system is immediately functional without supplemental training, support and classroom down time.

We assume the burden of training. You enjoy the benefit.

Anybody can learn to use the automation in ten seconds. Simply enter the Bible reference to be studied and click the “GO!” button. That is it! It is really that easy. The computer than acts like a research assistant and in a sense “studies” the text and reports on everything it found. Now the user has to step back in and examine the findings and incorporate them into his or her class work. As easy as it is, we take nothing for granted.

To insure that students fully understand the Passage Guide report, we provide each student with a two-hour instructional video explaining in detail all of the results generated by the Passage Guide automation. This is an easy, complete, and verifiable program for raising the proficiency level of your entire user base and thereby creates a new and dramatically higher baseline from which you may progress.

If students never progress beyond the Passage Guide baseline, they will still have learned a useful life skill which can enhance their Bible study for years to come. For those who choose to advance beyond the Passage Guide, a virtually limitless set of tools and reference works provides a continuous growth path to advanced studies. This is the one Bible software program you will never outgrow. It is easy enough for children and advanced enough for serious research.