General Tips for Learning on grow2serve.net

We are glad you’ve joined us for this adventure! Have questions? Take a look at the other resources found in this Help Book. We've also put together this list of tips to help you through online learning:

1. Schedule your times of course participation on your weekly calendar. Three or four blocks of about one hour each spread out throughout the week will work much better than four hours of cramming in one night.
   
   
2. Post early and post often when participating in a forum. Many of the small group dynamics you learned in group Bible studies also apply to participating in a course.
   
   
3. Watch for the “time out” effect. Whenever you start entering text in grow2serve.net, whether for an assignment or as a discussion forum post, the clock is ticking. The site will drop your connection if it sees no activity after two hours. The same as any other web page, grow2serve.net only knows you are actively doing something when you either open a new page or click on a link. You may be typing a long answer to an assignment, get interrupted, and then come back only to discover that your session has timed out and all of your work has been lost. If you are composing a longer response or one that requires a lot of reflection, you may want to write it somewhere else first and save it to prevent the "time out" loss. Then, when you are ready to submit it, you can copy and paste it into the discussion forum or assignment page. (Keep in mind that formatting often doesn't transfer correctly from one program to another and you might need to make some adjustments when copying over) After posting, you have 30 minutes to go back and edit it if needed.
   
   
4. Feel free to share information about yourself in your profile. It will enrich your learning/community experience and that of other learners if you know more about one another. The only people who can see the information in your profile are those enrolled in a course with you.
   
   
5. Keep moving. If you get stuck on something in a course or your computer is not cooperating, mention the difficulty to your facilitator, and then move on to the next element in the course. Don't let one issue keep you from working on what you can.
   
   
6. Plan your work time according to your internet speed. If your Internet connection is slow, plan for additional time to complete online assignments. Use the tab feature of your browser to open multiple pages on your course at the same time so that the next page is always loading while you are reading or responding to a forum. See the "computer requirements" for more information about Internet requirements.
   
   
7. If you get behind in a course, first work on the material for the current week, and then go back and catch up on past material that you missed.
   
   
8. Use the home page of your course as your home base. Everything else (email, activity lists, etc.) are supplemental tools, but the home page is the best tool for keeping track of your course.
   
   
9. If you do not prefer to read things on a screen, just copy and paste the material onto a Word document and print the readings out on paper.
   
   
10. Set your page zoom. Most browsers will zoom in and out on web pages if you click "ctrl +" and "ctrl -".
    
    
11. Get help when you need it. Check the FAQ section in the Help Book for various helpful resources. If you are still having trouble, contact your facilitator. You can also always contact us directly.