What Is Open Bible Assessment?

The idea

Khan Academy has a lot of great educational content, but I realized it was doing something more than that — it was adapting and recommending based on the user’s ability. The primary goal of Open Bible Assessment is to do the same thing for learning the Bible. OBA doesn’t have lessons, videos, or other course content — there’s already no shortage of great Bible resources out there. Instead, it’s a diagnostic tool.

Formal training

Going through seminary, I did genuinely grow in my understanding of the Bible, but there were many courses that I did not learn as much as I would have liked — sometimes because the courses covered material I already knew, other times because the material was far above my ability. This is no fault of seminary, but rather a difficulty inherent in trying to create a completely standardized program, where everyone takes the same number of courses to finish with the same credential.

A second problem I noticed was that many of the people I attended seminary with had no interest in pursuing ministry at all — they simply wanted to grow in their faith by learning more about the Bible. I’m sure most of them learned a great deal through their programs, but they also racked up a lot of debt in the process. My hope is that OBA can be a useful tool for both Christians who have done formal training but may have some remaining gaps, as well as those who want to understand their Bible better but don’t have the time or money to enroll in a formal program.

Assessment

The website is essentially made up of an assessment and a dashboard that displays results. The first round is 25 questions, which is what it takes before a score can appear on your dashboard; after that, each new round is 15. Each question is multiple choice and there’s no timer, and you don’t have to finish a round in one sitting — answer five now, come back tomorrow, and it picks up where you left off. Based on your previous answers, the assessment adapts. It first tries to identify broad areas of knowledge and unfamiliarity — does this person understand the Torah? What about the Latter Prophets? — and then it drills down into specific books and sections. As you reread books of the Bible, it retests your knowledge and adapts accordingly.

Scoring

After you finish that first round, a score is displayed on your dashboard. I realize for some this might be viewed as problematic or even offensive. The goal here is not to discern spiritual maturity or giftedness; rather, the score measures how well you understand the facts of Scripture. Who led the Israelites across the Red Sea? Which came first, Ruth or Saul?

The assessment also does not evaluate answers to complex theological questions. Both theological interpretation and spiritual maturity are important, but they fall outside the scope of this assessment (and probably any assessment!).

The score is intended to make learning more enjoyable by letting you see your progress over time in a tangible way — as you learn more about a section of the Bible, your score improves. The reason it is not a simple percentage is that as you answer harder questions correctly, the assessment gives you more difficult questions; if you get hard questions wrong, it gives you easier ones.

Recommending

After you’ve answered enough questions, the dashboard begins recommending places to read in the Bible, first prioritizing weak areas that are more foundational for understanding the whole Bible. For example, if someone has a poor grasp of both Ezekiel and Exodus, the assessment will recommend reading Exodus first, because Ezekiel is more dependent on Exodus for comprehension. You can understand Exodus without the Prophets, at least at a basic level, but you can’t understand the Prophets without understanding the Sinaitic covenant, or without learning about Moses and how the Israelites came to be a nation. The goal is to help you build a solid foundation rather than jumping randomly between topics, so that the time you spend rereading actually compounds into a better grasp of the whole Bible.

Anti-innovation

OBA doesn’t do anything a Christian couldn’t already do simply by being in the Word — reading Scripture, reflecting on it, and returning to it over time. This mirrors what people often do on their own when learning about a subject — reading a bit, pausing to mull over the concepts, reviewing notes, jotting down thoughts, picking up something different, or talking to someone about it. Sometimes a looser structure helps you learn more. OBA is meant to help with that process. If you step away from it for six months and instead spend that time reading your Bible and a few books, the assessment will still be able to recognize your improved understanding when you come back.

Beta

An important caveat: this tool still needs to be tested and improved further before it can be considered reliable. It took a lot of work to get it to this point, but if you use the website, please take it with a grain of salt.

Feedback

If you have any feedback, please send me an email at adstamper35 [at] gmail.com.