It is just over one month since we launched Spurgeon's Online.  The response has been so encouraging. Many of our "Open Learning" students chose to transfer to Online study and have been very positive about the benefits.  There has been interest from all over the world and many new students have enrolled.  It is particularly good to see how enthusiastically students are using the Forum facilities.  At last there is a real sense of community among our students who are studying at a distance from the College.  We hope a good number will turn up for the Study Days in May so that that sense of community can be nurtured further.  Our first students were very patient as we ironed out a few techinical issues and we are making improvements all the time as we receive feedback from students.  Our technical team, our Office staff, our finance department and, of course, Rachel Gill and Paul Scott-Evans, have been absolutely great an ...

I'm pleased to say that I'm still following the course.  I wasn't really sure whether I'd have the determination to keep going but I'm about 1/3rd of the way through the first module.

It's not been easy (at times) with full-time job, 3 children & various church responsibilities but I'm still managing to make good use of my commuting time. There are some days when my brain just hurts too much after work to spend time on the study.  So I just take it easy and remind myself that it's not a race.

I do pretty much all the studying using my Palm TX pda.  It's much easier that using a laptop on the train and it has a bible and web-browser.  I save the web-pages on the PDA for each unit so I can work off-line.  The journal is done using a Pocket Word application which I syncronise with my PC each night (in case I lose my PDA). 

Till next month.....

All is going well so far.  I'm learning a lot and enjoying the challenge.

The website is working well and the material is split up into small chunks which make it easy for me to complete some sections on my daily train journey.

I just completed the registration process which was fairly easy.  

I had some irritations with PayPal.  It seems that PayPal detects that I'm living in Holland and presents me with the Dutch language PayPal site and Dutch payment options which differ from the UK.   I figured out how to get the PayPal site into English and then was able to register a credit card.  This registration process took a week to complete because in order to register a cred card with paypal you need to make a £1 payment and wait for the transaction to appear on your credit card statement.  You then need to enter a code which appears next to the transaction description to complete registration of the credit card. 

I really happy with the online study notes and the website.

Today marks one week since the launch of Spurgeon's Online.  We have been tweaking the site and dealing with the odd one or two unexpected complications BUT we are so pleased with the site overall.  The positive way students have responded to the new facilities this site provides has been an encouragement to us all.  Our work is far from over and we know there are many improvements that can be made.  We are deteremined to respond to any comments we receive and proactively introduce any improvements we can.  It's great to see the blog and forums being used and to note the number of visits to our site every day.  Long may this positive start continue! 

At the end of a busy day we are officially lauched and the first students have registered Online.  We have already received feedback from a student who was amazed how easy it was to navigate the site.  So far, so good. 

All our technical support team are geared up for the live launch tomorrow.  Let's hope all goes smoothly.  Lots of interest has been logged by perspective students so we are all really encouraged.  A huge number of people have been involved in making Spurgeon's Online happen.  We are very grateful to them all.

Debra Reid

With one week to go before the planned launch of Spurgeon's Online, Paul Scott Evans, Rachel Gill and myself are working hard to put the final touches to the Online Site.  We are very excited at the new opportunities this opens up for us as a College as well as the new opportunities this gives many people throughout the world to take advantage of the training we have available.  World-wide web here we come...

Debra Reid