The best way to take the School of the Shepherds is as a group. This involves a designated leader who sets up the group and monitors the group’s progress and schedules discussion groups and followup.
Group Setup
- A group leader is assigned or volunteers.
- Purchase a group license. During the purchase process, you will be able to select the desired course and the number of seats to reserve. When you check out, you will have an opportunity to specify the name of your group. Keep this short and include the state or province abbreviation in your group name; for example, “Crossroads Bible Fellowship, NY.”
- After your group has been approved, you will receive an email indicating the group setup is complete and ready to go.
Inviting Group Members
- Go to the Group Management page, where you will be able to invite students (also called “users”) to occupy the reserved seats. Don’t worry, you can always add more seats later if needed.
- Students will receive an email with instructions for joining the group.
- Advise all students to check the spam folder in the email client/app in case emails from BER/SOTS get flagged. They should set the spam checker to allow all emails from biblicaleldership.com.
Removing Group Members
- Inevitably a group member needs to be removed for whatever reason (for example, creating a user with the wrong email address).
- To remove a user, go to the Group Management page, select your group, scroll down the “Registered User” list. Check the box next to the user to be removed.
- The “Add User” box above, changes to “Remove User(s)”. Click on that and all checked users will be removed.
Leading the Group (suggestions)
- An initial meeting is held to discuss the course and expectations.
- One or two lessons are assigned per week. This depends on the leader’s assessment of how much weekly work the group can handle.
- Each participant works on the online lesson for that week and successfully completes the “Review Questions” quiz. The group leader can monitor their progress online on the Group Management page.
- The group should then meet in person at the end of each week with all participants present to interact with the Discussion Questions. The group leader will facilitate the discussion.
- The group leader can send out emails to the group via a button on the group management page. (Note: the way the system email works is that if the student hits “reply” to the email you send out, it will go to the SOTS@biblicaleldership.com address and you will not receive the reply. They should reply by emailing you directly. This is an unfortunate limitation of the system, which is set up that way to minimize the users’ email client flagging your email to them as spam).
Group Discussions Online
- To enhance learning, we encourage group discussion either in person or online.
- With SOTS you can use and an online forum (text-based) or video conferencing.
- Once your group is set up and registered, you can click here or in the green box below to find out more online about discussion group options.
Virtual Groups
- A group may span different geographical regions, with the “face to face” discussions held using an online app like zoom, Google Hangouts, Skype, etc.
That’s about it. If you have any questions, contact us.
Course List Student Profile Group Management Discussion Groups