During COVID, Co-Serve developed an on-line version of our servant leadership course. This included activities that helped students engage with the material and with each other in an on-line environment, and it also included the opportunity for students to tell their life stories in special breakout groups.
The amazing advantage of our on-line courses has been the ability to gather students from all around the world and see them form a learning community with each other. Often we have students from 8 or more countries attending. The disadvantage is that it is relatively easy for students to “sign up” for an on-line course, but then not always be able to remain committed to the classes and assignments. So, this year, we developed an initial introduction course, where we were able to assess which students were truly able to meet online and do the work for the course. We then invited these students to continue in our full course. The results were quite wonderful. This year, we had 17 students from 7 countries continue in our full, 4-week course, and we saw them go really deep into the material and really grow close with each other.
