Learners' Help Book
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:
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
- 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.
-
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.
- 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.
-
Set your page zoom. Most browsers will zoom in
and out on web pages if you click "ctrl +" and "ctrl -".
- 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.